Matilda could hardly believe what she was hearing. Until tonight she had only heard Giles speak to his wife with gentleness. But even through her astonishment at his harsh tone, and the subject they were speaking of, she couldn’t help but wonder where this left her.
The parlour door was suddenly slammed shut, and thinking Lily was about to rush upstairs to her bedroom, Matilda fled back to her bed.
Lily didn’t come upstairs, and as the house was suddenly silent again, Matilda realized that they must both still be in the parlour and had shut the windows for fear of someone overhearing them.
Panic overwhelmed her as she lay there in the dark. If the Milsons were going to America, what would happen to her?
In five months she had achieved so much. Lily no longer criticized her table manners, and only occasionally did she pull her up on her speech. She could bake pies – Aggie said her pastry was as light as her own – make a cake, she could sew almost as neatly as her mistress and she’d read dozens of books. With all those accomplishments she could almost certainly get another position, but she had grown to love Tabitha as if she were her own child.
She had won Lily’s trust when Tabby had croup and she stayed up night after night attending to her. She’d got the child to eat well, taught her nursery rhymes and some of the letters of the alphabet. Tabby loved her back too, they were as comfortable and happy together as if they were related. Could Giles really be so unkind as just to show her the door without any thought for the growing bond between them?
Aggie had curtly told her many times how lucky she was. She said that in most households the nursemaid was on the same level as a scullery maid, while she was treated almost like a relative. Matilda knew this was true – she ate with her employers, had the run of the house, she could read their books and sit out in their garden. Lily even confided in her sometimes, particularly about Tabitha.
She wept then. Finders Court had become a hazy memory, just as hunger, cold and being dirty had. Was she pulled out of all that just to be shoved back in there again?
Lily stayed in her room the following morning. When she hadn’t appeared by the time Aggie had prepared breakfast, Matilda took Tabitha into the dining-room. Giles was there alone.
‘Good morning, sir,’ she said. It was even hotter than the previous day. Aggie had opened the windows wide as soon as she’d come in, but there was no early morning breeze to banish the smell of the drains.
‘Mrs Milson is a little unwell,’ he said, his face stern and unsmiling. ‘After you’ve finished your breakfast you can take a tray up to her. I shall be out all day today. Try and keep Tabby quiet so Mrs Milson can rest.’
Matilda knew by his expression that he wasn’t going to make any conversation. She sat Tabitha on her chair, fastened a napkin around her neck and put her bowl of bread and milk in front of her.
‘Don’t want that,’ Tabitha said churlishly, pushing it away.
‘You will eat it,’ Matilda replied, putting it back in front of her. ‘If you don’t you’ll get nothing else.’
Matilda sensed that Giles was looking at her. She willed Tabitha not to make a scene today, she was tired and drained after having spent most of the night awake. Refusing to give the child any alternative had been the way she’d got her to eat; mostly if Matilda was firm enough she buckled down eventually and ate what was put in front of her.
‘Don’t want it,’ she said, pushing it away again, but this time she pushed it so hard the dish toppled and spilt the contents on the tablecloth.
‘Naughty girl,’ Matilda exclaimed, scraping it back into the bowl. ‘Look at the mess you’ve made on the cloth. You deserve a spanking.’
‘Don’t you ever threaten violence to my daughter,’ Giles burst out. ‘Lift a finger to her and you’ll be out of this house immediately.’
‘Looks like I’ll be out on me ear anyway,’ she retorted, shocked by his unexpected ferocity.
As soon as the words were out she wanted to claw them back. Being insolent was something neither of the Milsons tolerated, and what’s more she’d let slip she’d been eavesdropping.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she said quickly, blushing furiously. ‘I never thought what I was saying. ‘Course I wouldn’t smack Tabby, it were just said hasty like because I was cross. I didn’t mean to listen to what you and Madam was saying last night either, but I couldn’t help it, your voices were so loud.’
There was a hostile silence for a few moments, and Tabitha used the opportunity to push the bread and milk even further away.
‘It’s too hot for her to eat that,’ Giles said eventually, and taking a piece of bread he spread it with butter and honey, cutting it into tiny pieces for her. ‘There, Tabby, eat this,’ he said, standing up to put the plate in front of her.
‘Why would you think you’d be “out on your ear”, when we go to America?’ he asked with a touch of sarcasm once Tabitha had begun to eat the bread. ‘Don’t you have any faith in me, Matilda?’
She hung her head, ashamed of herself. ‘Well, the new parson here might not need a nursemaid,’ she said meekly.
‘That’s very true, but I would find you another job.’
Matilda knew her fears to be of little importance, but she felt a need to explain them. ‘But it’s Tabby, sir, I really love her and I think she loves me an’ all. Nobody else is going to be as nice as you and Madam either. Are they?’
Giles hardly knew what to say. Matilda was an enigma. She’d come from the gutter but she had the pride of a duchess. In the five months she’d been here, she’d managed to speak better, develop ladylike manners and learn a host of new skills, but she hadn’t really grasped that servants were supposed to be subservient.
She had opinions she aired, she had ideas of her own. ‘Self-assured’ was how Lily described her, and she had come to depend on Matilda’s sound judgement. When Tabitha had croup it was Matilda who knew to hold her near a steaming kettle. She knew to wash a sticky eye with salt water, and refused to let Lily dose her child with a patent cough mixture because she said it had dangerous things in it. She was right, it transpired later when a doctor friend admitted it contained laudanum.
The truth of the matter was, Matilda was invaluable. If Lily was called away, she had no fears that her child would be neglected in her absence. It was entirely true that Tabitha loved her too, indeed she would often run to her in preference to her mama. Matilda was a good influence on the child too, patient, caring but very firm. Wilful Tabitha got away with far less with her than she did with her parents.
Yet it was Matilda’s remark that nobody else was going to be as nice as them that struck him most. However hard he looked for a position for her, he knew only too well he couldn’t promise she would get the same treatment she did here. The reality was that she would be overworked, treated like dirt beneath her employers’ feet and never valued. That really saddened him because he knew young Matilda wouldn’t keep her lips buttoned if things went badly.
‘Nothing is settled yet,’ he said, and knew he was a coward because he couldn’t admit to her or his wife that he was dead set on going. ‘So don’t go worrying your head about “maybes”.’
Matilda just looked at him, clear blue eyes unwavering and all-seeing. ‘You are going, sir, I knew that last night when I heard you talking,’ she said, her voice calm and measured. ‘So maybe you’d better take me along too, because Madam won’t be able to cope alone with Tabby in a strange country, and that means you won’t be able to give your time to others.’
Giles knew any other employer would slap a servant down for such impudence, but he couldn’t. Her eyes held no guile, her voice contained no malice or threat. She was speaking the truth.
‘That’s for me to decide,’ he said sharply, getting up from the table. ‘You are getting above yourself, Matilda.’
‘I’m sorry, sir.’ She dropped her eyes from his in an effort to look demure.
Giles left the room quickly. He’d thought when Matilda saved Tabby’s life
that it was the hand of God, now he was certain. His wife thought him cruel, his friends thought him mad, but this young girl was offering him blind allegiance because she’d come to care for him and his family. The truth of the matter was that this girl was exceptional in every way. She had brought peace and sunshine into the parsonage, calmed Lily’s nervous disposition, indeed her presence was beneficial to the happiness and security of the whole family.
He would be a fool not to take her with them.
Chapter Three
‘That’s it, over there,’ Lucas said, leaning on his oars for a moment to point out a cottage on the opposite bank of the Thames, some 400 yards ahead. ‘And if I ain’t much mistaken that’s Dolly coming out to meet us!’
Matilda turned in her seat in the bows to look, and to her delight, her father’s new home was even prettier than he’d described. It was white-painted clapboard with a thatched roof, the large garden sloping right down to the river. They were still too far away for her to see Dolly distinctly, yet the welcoming way she was rushing down towards the landing stage, merrily waving both arms, made Matilda’s heart leap with joy for her father.
It was early January, bitterly cold with a stiff wind whipping up the water, and it had been a long ride from Chelsea where her father had picked her up. Matilda withdrew one hand from the new shawl the Milsons had given her for Christmas, waved back, then quickly tucked it back inside. The Milsons had given her two days’ holiday so she could visit her father and meet his new woman. Yet the sparkle in her eyes and the roses in her cheeks were not entirely due to the cold or excitement at seeing her father. She was bursting with momentous news, but she felt she must hold it back and wait for an appropriate time to break it to him.
Last August with its stifling hot weather had been a kind of watershed in both their lives. In that month she had heard about the Reverend Milson’s intention to move to America, her father had met Dolly, and her brothers had run away from home. Matilda had been deeply troubled by all three events, but now six months later it seemed as if everything had turned out for the best and luck was smiling on the Jennings family at last.
Luke and George had run off after being given a beating by their father for picking pockets. He guessed they were hiding in one of the hundreds of rookeries in Seven Dials but all his attempts to find them came to nothing. Countless old hags and their bully boys made a business of luring children into their lairs by offering them food and shelter. Once they had got them firmly in their clutches they trained them as thieves, taking most of the proceeds.
Around the same time Lucas met Dolly Jacobs. He had been rowing a party down the river towards the village of Barnes one hot afternoon, and one of their number suggested stopping off for refreshments at Willow Cottage tea garden.
Lucas stayed in his boat while the group sat at tables in the pleasant riverside garden with their tea and cakes, but a little later, the woman who owned it brought him down a jug of ginger beer. Lucas related later to Matilda what a nice, jolly woman she was, and how he had offered to drop in again before long and repair an old rowing boat she had moored on her landing stage.
The friendship between her father and Dolly grew as he repaired the boat, and before long he was calling on her regularly to do more odd jobs. Dolly and her late husband had owned a very successful cake shop in Cheapside. Around five years ago they had sold their shop and retired to Willow Cottage because of Mr Jacobs’s ill health. Sadly he had died a year after moving there. Dolly had been left well provided for but she was lonely, so she opened up her garden and parlour as a tea garden.
Matilda was concerned at first that this little widow might be using her father, for she couldn’t imagine why else a woman in her position would befriend a humble waterman. But she knew her father was very lonely, and as it seemed to be taking his mind off fretting about the boys, she kept her fears to herself.
It was at the end of October that they got news of George, through a carter named Mr Albert Gore out in Deptford. Gore had caught both brothers stealing from his wagon, and though Luke had managed to give him the slip, he had felt sorry enough for George to take him home with him for a meal and a bath. From what George told the carter about his older brother and his family situation, he realized that the easily led boy had been forced into thieving by Luke.
As Mrs Gore was very taken with George, they kept him with them, and eventually got a note to Lucas saying they were prepared to give him a permanent home in return for helping on their cart. Lucas went straight over to Deptford, determined to take George home, but when he found they were respectable, kind people and his youngest son was very happy with them, he agreed that George would be safer with them, well away from Luke’s bad influence.
It transpired that Luke was beyond rescue. Although only just eleven years old, since running away from home he had embraced all the nastiest aspects of London’s underworld, revelling in drinking and dog fights and showing great admiration for all crime. He boasted he was going to become a ‘cracksman’, and as he had already served his apprenticeship at pickpocketing and was working at night with two older burglars as their ‘boy’ – his role being to wriggle through small windows and let the others in through the front door to plunder the house – Lucas knew that within a short time Luke probably would indeed progress to far more serious crime, if not blowing safes. Sadly he knew then it was futile to spend any further time or energy pursuing him.
Later, in November, Lucas said he was going to live with Dolly and in future would work that stretch of the river. Although it was common enough for the working classes to live together without marrying, Matilda was surprised and a little shocked that a seemingly respectable widow would do such a thing, she just hoped that Dolly wouldn’t turn out to be another Peggie, and give her father more grief. Yet he did seem so very happy and excited, and even if it meant she wouldn’t be able to see him so often, she was very glad he had found someone to love and was finally leaving Finders Court.
‘Now, isn’t she a fine-looking woman?’ Lucas said as they approached the landing stage, his croaky voice softer with affection. ‘I calls ’er me apple dumpling.’
Matilda looked up at the woman waiting for them and thought his pet name for her was appropriate. She was small and round with a sweet, unlined face wreathed in a beaming smile. Although her hair was grey and Matilda knew her to be as old as her father, she had a youthful gaiety about her which even the oversized men’s boots and coat she was wearing couldn’t conceal.
‘Looks like you’ve fallen on your feet, Father,’ she whispered.
‘Oi! I pays me way,’ he said with some indignation.
As soon as the boat was secured, Dolly rushed them straight towards the cottage, clucking over how cold they both looked and how she’d made a beef and oyster pie for their dinner. As they went up through the garden Matilda saw hens, geese and ducks, and a pen of rabbits. She wondered if they were just pets, she couldn’t imagine Dolly killing them.
Dolly ushered Matilda straight into a large, warm kitchen which smelled deliciously of meat pie. She had a stove just like the one at the parsonage and on the table was a newly baked cake. From the beams on the ceiling hung bunches of dried herbs and flowers, there were dozens of jars of preserves on a shelf and even more china than Matilda had seen at the Milsons’ sitting on the dresser. It was bright, clean and very homely. Clearly she wasn’t another Peggie.
‘Sit yerself down,’ Dolly ordered, taking Matilda’s shawl from her shoulders and pointing to a chair by the stove. ‘And you should be wearing something warmer than that in this cold weather. I’ve got a coat upstairs that will fit you. I’ll get it later when we’ve had a cup of tea and a chat. But bless me, I haven’t even said how nice it is to meet you at last, or happy New Year.’
Matilda smiled as the woman smacked a hearty kiss on her cheek. She wondered if she always talked as much. ‘It’s nice to meet you too,’ she said. ‘And I’m sure it’s going to be a happy New Year for all of us.’
/> Dolly shed her man’s coat and boots, making a complaint about how muddy the garden was and how she longed for spring to arrive. Her dress was a sober dark blue with a small lace collar, but the material and cut of it wouldn’t have looked out of place on one of the richer women at the church. She was curvaceous rather than fat, and as she lifted her dress to slip into a pair of dainty indoor shoes, Matilda noted her shapely ankles.
Lucas pulled up the Bosun’s chair that had been in their old room and sat down beside his daughter. ‘I told Dolly this was me dowry,’ he joked. ‘Looks well in ’ere though, don’t it?’
‘As if it was made for here,’ Matilda agreed. She sensed her father was embarrassed that it was the only thing he had to offer Dolly.
‘Lucas is made for here too,’ Dolly said as she made a pot of tea. Her eyes were dark brown and twinkled merrily as she smiled. ‘Heaven knows, I don’t know how I managed without him. He’s a real wonder, he can fix anything. And I want to say before we go any further that you must think of here as home now, Matty. Lucas and me might not be wed, but me heart’s set on him and so his children are my children too.’
‘We’re gonna get wed though,’ Lucas said, and reached out to squeeze his daughter’s hand. ‘We thought in the spring, when the blossom’s out. How d’you feel about that?’
Dolly put the tea pot down on the stove and looked anxiously at Matilda as if expecting disapproval.
‘I think that’s the best news I’ve ever heard,’ Matilda said. Her eyes were prickling and she hoped she wasn’t going to disgrace herself by crying. She might not have known the woman for longer than ten minutes, but just the warmth flowing between the couple, Dolly’s kind words about his children and the security her father would gain by marrying her were enough to dispel any doubts in her mind. ‘I just hope you make it before I leave London. You see, the Milsons have asked me to go to America with them.’