The Foundling Read online

  He shivered. ‘No. I ain’t having you near any of it.’ I dropped the crown into his hand, and he closed his fist around it. ‘I’ll add you to my list of creditors. Only you’ll need to lend me paper and a quill, too. Oh, and I can’t write.’

  If he thought he was being funny, we didn’t laugh. Nor did he move to go, and it was a moment before I realised he was looking at me peculiar. Abe was sat on a stool, brushing his boots into the waste bucket, absorbed in his task.

  In a low voice, Ned said: ‘Why are you still here, Bess?’ He gestured at the sorry state of our neglected living quarters. The water Abe had set over the fire had warmed, and I tested it with a finger before removing it with a cloth and setting it on the shelf before me. Through the dark window, I could see the Irish family, the Riordans, who lived across the court. They were moving around their room in a complicated sequence, setting out their supper while their father held a large orange cat to his chest. He was telling a story, and smiling, and the boys laying the table were smiling, too, though I could see their bowls were chipped and didn’t match, and their tiny room was strung with drying sheets. I realised I was still wearing my shawl, which was damp, and took it off and hung it before the fire, where it began steaming.

  ‘Bess,’ Ned said again, as I moved past him. I felt his fingertips brush my arm, and I was overcome by a rush of powerful sadness and love for my brother, as though he had stained me with it. Was this the boy who pushed our beds together and made foolish voices from behind the red curtain that hung in-between? Who would put on a puppet show, making mouths in the fabric with his hand?

  ‘You take my money and ask why I’m still here? That’s why.’ I kept my back to him, and dunked our cups once, twice, drowning them, relieving them, drowning them again.

  After a moment, he said: ‘I’m sorry about your daughter. I’m sure you’ll find her. Let me know if I can help.’

  I closed my eyes, and opened them, and the Riordans were blurred in their window. I sniffed, and dunked, and wiped, and set the things on their shelf, and a minute or two later heard Ned speak to Abe, the creak of the floorboards, the door closing. I looked at the rooftops and the spires, and thought of the steady flow of the city moving darkly below them. How easy it would be to slip into its depths, and be swept away.

  CHAPTER 6

  There was no market on Sundays. We were not churchgoers – the last time we had been as a family was my mother’s funeral at St Bride’s – so Abe looked at me a beat longer than usual when I came out in my printed cotton dress. I went to church only at Christmas with Keziah and William and the children – we packed ourselves into little pews with the Spanish and the Irish and the blackamoors, and sang and listened and recited, and tried to hush the children impatient for their roast goose and plum pudding. I didn’t eat Christmas dinner with them, though, always buying a chicken on the way home to eat with Abe.

  ‘Church?’ Abe said when I told him where I was going. ‘What for?’

  ‘I’m going with Keziah,’ I lied, swapping my indoor cap for my outdoor one so I didn’t have to look at him. ‘Why don’t you visit Catherine today? You could see the baby; he’ll be getting on now.’

  He stared at me with cloudy eyes. Was he growing thinner? It was difficult to tell; I saw his face more than my own. He shifted in his chair, not yet dressed for the day. It was so cold we needed the fire lit all the time.

  ‘I ain’t going out in this weather,’ was his reply. ‘Fetch my blanket, would you?’

  I covered him with it and tucked it around his shoulders. At home he was not the Billingsgate man; he took up less space, and seemed less capable.

  ‘I wonder if the Fleet river will freeze like it did last year,’ I said, busying myself with covering him in blankets. He’d eaten half his toast and I finished it off. ‘Do you remember the dead dog that was frozen in it? And all the little ones were poking it with a stick?’

  His eyes were closed; he nodded to show he was listening. He was always tired on Sundays. I had no need to worry – he spent six days outside, shivering in a shed, plunging his hands into icy buckets of shrimp. Of course he didn’t want to go outside. I tucked the blanket more firmly around him, tossed a few more coals onto the fire, and left.

  On Sundays the Foundling Hospital opened up like a country mansion, throwing its black gates wide for all of London’s finest. The road was choked with carriages, and glossy horses tossed their manes, puffing steam into the cold air, while blank-faced coachmen waited to turn through the left gate as empty ones came through the right. I slipped through behind a well-dressed couple and walked alongside the splendid painted traffic, noticing house crests stencilled on the sides and velvet curtains at the windows, and wondering how many of them contained people who lived on neighbouring streets, who wished to sit in a queue just to be seen arriving. Ahead, at the furthest building with the large clock face, I watched them disembark, with their straight backs and tall wigs and gloved hands. I remembered the way the same people had pressed themselves against the walls on lottery night to watch, with their fans and sugary smiles.

  Doctor Mead had told me to meet him outside, so I stood a little way off the drive to wait for him. It was a clear morning, more like spring than winter. A few young trees were planted at the edges of the lawns, and behind the chapel there were large manicured gardens and an orchard further on. Today there were children everywhere: some belonging to the hospital in brown uniforms, while the rest, who had parents, were very finely dressed. Swells I saw often enough, even on the city thoroughfares, for they liked to be seen, trotting in and out of the haberdashers and confectioners and toy emporiums. But their children: hardly ever. Several looked to have never been outside at all, and were pale and plump as doves. I watched two young boys striding alongside their mother, wearing silver wigs like little gentlemen. Their drawers were white as flour, and the gold buttons on their frock coats shone.

  Another carriage had drawn to the front of the crowd and was unloading its cargo – a tall woman dressed in green Spitalfields silk and her daughter in butter yellow. The little girl held the layers of her mother’s skirt in her fist and jumped to the ground, then reached for her hand, but her mother was talking to the coachman and had not noticed.

  ‘Miss Bright.’

  Doctor Mead was standing behind me. I might not have recognised him; his hay-coloured hair was hidden beneath a cocked hat, and his shirtsleeves under a smart blue coat. I had only seen him quite intimately; now he was just one gentlemen in a sea of them. But he had found me, all the same.

  ‘Shall we?’

  He gave me his arm and, after a moment’s hesitation I took it. I had seen wealthy couples do this in the street, as though the woman could not walk without help.

  ‘Is this a chapel or a pleasure garden?’ I asked.

  Doctor Mead laughed. ‘It would seem they are one and the same. This excursion, however, will cost you more than a shilling, so naturally it’s even more desirable.’

  I stopped, and my arm slipped from his. ‘I have brought no money.’

  He smiled and shook his head. ‘There is a collection plate, and no obligation. You can give nothing or you can give a pound, whatever you are able.’

  We began walking again, joining the trickle of cuffs and cravats and cocked hats narrowing towards the chapel doors.

  ‘Who are all these people?’ I asked.

  ‘Benefactors. Governors and their familiars. Wealthy Londoners, and some from the country, too: Middlesex, Hertfordshire.’

  ‘They have no chapels in Middlesex and Hertfordshire?’

  Doctor Mead smiled very easily, I noticed. ‘Evidently not.’

  A woman in front of us was wearing one of the tallest wigs I had ever seen. Piled and plaited, with ribbons strewn about in it, it was the colour of bare branches and reached a foot off her head. Doctor Mead and I were attracting curious little looks, and many people said good morning to him, fixing their smiles determinedly on him and avoiding me. Some of them c
ast pointed looks at my cotton frock, peeking from beneath my plain cloak, but my head might have been covered with a nosebag. No one looked me in the eye.

  Inside, the chapel was modern, only a few years old, and had none of the soaring ceilings and ancient spires of St Bride’s. It was more like a theatre than a place of worship. At the top of the high walls, the sun poured in through stained-glass windows the height of three men, and there was a balcony wrapped beneath the ceiling, supported by marble pillars. The pews did not face towards the front, but inwards, with an aisle running through and a pulpit at one end, so everybody would have to turn to the right or left to watch the preacher deliver his sermon. I followed Doctor Mead to a pew in the centre at the front, and he indicated for me to step in. I felt like a chop on display at a butcher’s, and wished we had sat at the back. But he did not seem aware of the looks we attracted or, rather, the meaning behind them, meeting them with his easy smile. It made me like him all the more. Across the aisle, two tall-wigged women regarded me openly; I met their stares with my own, until they looked away, and whispered behind their fans. My cheeks felt hot, my mouth dry. I wished to be at home, eating a sugar mouse with my stockinged feet on the stool and Abe dozing in his chair. Sunday was a day of rest – our only day of rest. Surely these people did nothing but rest, so much that it grew dull to them, so they brushed on their powder and laced their stays and polished their shoes to come here. This chapel was a hall of mirrors: they were not here to see one another but rather themselves, through the gaze of others.

  A troupe of Foundling children came down the centre aisle, dressed smartly in their brown outfits. I knew Clara could not be one of them, but I peered into their faces anyway. They were smooth and untroubled, with none of the pinched, tired expressions of the infants at Black and White Court, who were like tiny old men and women.

  ‘Elliott,’ said a deep, rich voice. A large man with heavy jowls and an elaborately curled wig was standing before us, leaning on a gold-topped cane.

  ‘Grandfather.’ Doctor Mead was delighted. ‘Will you sit with us?’

  ‘I am with the countess – her family are visiting from Prussia – but do come to Great Ormond Street for luncheon afterwards. There will be a gathering.’ His dark eyes were fine and friendly, and I felt their effect when they turned to me. ‘Who is your companion?’

  ‘Grandfather, this is Miss Bright. She is a friend whom I am endeavouring to help. And you might be able to help us, too. May I bring her to Great Ormond Street after the service?’

  Before I could protest, the old man waved a large hand covered with rings, as though he had pasted his fingers and plunged them into a treasure chest. ‘All friends welcome,’ he said. ‘A pleasure to meet you, Miss Bright.’ He nodded at us both and moved swiftly along, only to be stopped two or three yards away by some other wigged creature.

  In the close air of the chapel, with the smells of hair and bodies and perfume all around, sweat and musk and floral and tobacco clamouring all at once, I felt quite light-headed, and the knot in my stomach tightened.

  ‘Have you found anything since last week?’ I asked Doctor Mead in a low voice.

  He withdrew Clara’s papers from his jacket, bound in the blue ribbon. ‘I have brought the memorandum, to show it to the governors, and ask if any of them might remember the person who collected your daughter. So few children are reclaimed, you see – only about one in a hundred – so there are not many women to remember, which is a great shame, but it may mean fortune is on our side.’

  I took the parcel from him. The paper smelled old and dusty, and I traced with a finger the only part I could make sense of: the numbers six, two and seven, turning them to see the other side, as if the words might suddenly make sense.

  Somebody else approached Doctor Mead and began speaking. If only we had gone to a public house or a chophouse, or his house or mine – here we might as well have been standing on the Strand. I sat on my ungloved hands while he exchanged pleasantries with the woman before him. He did not introduce me this time, and she did not ask. She was tall and pale and elegant, with slim ungloved hands and yellow hair beneath her hat. There was a movement at her skirts, and a moment later a little girl emerged to stand before me on the other side of the wooden balustrade. She fixed me with large, dark eyes, and I recognised her as the girl in the butter-yellow dress I had seen jumping from the carriage earlier. I wondered if I should speak, to tell her I liked her dress, or ask her name, but before I could her expression grew furtive, and I fell into silent surprise as she brought something out of a pocket at her waist. In the palm of her hand sat a tiny, curious creature I had never seen before. It had a wrinkled head and ancient neck that reached from a hard shell of green and brown, so intricately patterned I thought she might have painted it. It might have been a toy, had it not at that moment withdrawn its head and four spiky feet, disappearing altogether, and leaving only its pretty shell. My mouth fell open in astonishment. The little girl put it back inside her dress and turned her mouth up at the corners in a shy, private smile. I could not help but smile back.

  ‘Charlotte, come.’ Her mother, who had not noticed our exchange, placed a firm hand on her shoulder. A ruby ring glittered on her finger.

  ‘A pleasure seeing you, Mrs Callard,’ said Doctor Mead.

  It took a moment for me to understand what he had said. The words travelled slowly through my ears, thick as pea soup, congealing somewhere in my mind and making me dumb. The woman and the little girl moved away – I saw green and butter yellow steering through the crowd, and the backs of their heads, fair and dark. I craned my neck to see where they would go, and they moved into a row of seats at the end of the chapel, behind us, out of sight, their faces eclipsed by hats and wigs.

  I had dropped the sheaf of papers, and Doctor Mead leaned to pick them up. ‘We will go to my grandfather’s after the service – he only lives a few minutes’ walk, at Great Ormond Street,’ he was saying. ‘There will be Foundling governors there, of course. I went to visit him myself yesterday, but he was at some surgeons’ dinner or other. He still works, at eighty! Would you believe? I said to him: “Grandfather, it would not surprise me if somebody sneezed at your funeral and you sat up in the coffin to prescribe a tonic.”’ Doctor Mead was smiling, but I was not listening.

  ‘Who was that?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The woman you were speaking with just now.’

  ‘Mrs Callard? Do you know her?’

  ‘No. Is that her daughter?’

  ‘Yes. Charlotte.’

  ‘And is she . . . is she married?’

  ‘Widowed. Her husband died a few years ago. He was a friend of mine.’

  I thought of the child’s private smile, and her dark eyes. Had her hair a tint to it? Did it shine red in the sun? My voice would not rise above a whisper. ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Daniel. He had an interesting job: a merchant. I forget now what he dealt in. Ivory, was it? No, I remember now. It was whalebone. Ah, here is the chaplain. Do you have a hymn sheet?’

  I barely remember the service. I sat through all of it somehow, though it wasn’t difficult, for I felt numb, and let the sermons and hymns wash over me. For an hour all I could think was three things in turn, over and over, around and around: Daniel was married. That was his wife. And with her was my daughter. She was the right age and size, with those dark, dark eyes and hair like mine. Her mother was fair, and older than me. Older than Daniel, even, who had been, I supposed, twenty-five or -six, though of course several years had passed. She had called her daughter Charlotte.

  I was vaguely aware of Doctor Mead’s hand on my arm, and people rising from the pews and surging towards the doors. He might have spoken, but I could not hear him; my ears were muffled, filled with a rushing sound, and my limbs were heavy and slow. I felt frozen, like the dead dog in the Fleet.

  ‘Miss Bright?’

  Clara was returned to me the day after I brought her, the papers said. Perhaps Charlotte was Alex
andra Callard’s daughter, and we’d had daughters around the same time. But Daniel had been fair, like his wife, with sand-coloured hair and light eyes. In Black and White Court there’d been a litter of redhead children, and one sibling had stood out like a raven among doves, with brown skin and sullen features. They said his father beat him.

  ‘Miss Bright?’

  The chapel was emptying, save for some women chatting and tossing their wigs, and a group of men standing like painted peacocks, clucking around Doctor Mead’s grandfather. There were no children anywhere.

  ‘Miss Bright!’

  I was startled back to life. Doctor Mead was staring at me, his eyes burning with concern. ‘Are you unwell?’

  I leapt from my seat, almost colliding with him, and peered around the chapel, twisting so that I could see every corner and bench, craning up at the balcony and then pushing past him and fleeing down the aisle to the doors, holding my bonnet on my head with one hand and the neck of my cloak with the other.

  Blue, red and white: dark coats and black hats and cloud-coloured hair everywhere, but no green, no yellow. I pushed my way through the little groups congregating in the weak sunshine, and felt my throat closing. The carriages had begun collecting their owners, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash of butter yellow disappearing through a door, and a little stockinged foot clad in a black shoe. A sleek coachman closed the door and climbed up to his seat. As he tidied his coattails and reached for the reins, I rushed towards the carriage, and was ten or twelve yards away when I felt a hand, firm on my arm.

  ‘Miss Bright.’ Doctor Mead’s cheeks were pink. ‘Where are you going?’ His breath came in little puffs, turning the air between us to smoke. He must have run after me. I must have appeared mad. I could not appear mad before a doctor. He was waiting for an explanation, distress clouding his usually cheerful face.

  ‘I’m unwell,’ I said. ‘I needed some air.’