Chapter 20 #2
‘Sally,’ she hollered in a bark Thea wasn’t used to.
‘Have you been at that bloody–’ she stopped abruptly as she turned and saw Thea and Martha, the latter looking shocked too.
‘Oh, I am sorry Your Grace, Lady Foxm-’ Mrs Phibbs started, but went silent again, sentence truncated.
‘What on earth is that?’ She peered at the sponge on the tray.
‘Looks like a brain, doesn’t it?’ asked Thea.
Mrs Phibbs looked horrified. ‘That’s never what a brain looks like?’
‘Afraid so,’ said Thea.
‘Then what’s it doing on the scullery bench?’ asked Mrs Phibbs, visibly gathering herself. ‘Whose is it?’
‘It isn’t actually a brain,’ clarified Thea. ‘It just looks like one.’
‘This is a sponge,’ said Martha.
‘It is alive though,’ said Thea.
Mrs Phibbs backed away a little.
‘Not dangerous,’ said Martha, and then eyed the sponge again. ‘Probably.’
‘It got three times bigger when we put it in water,’ said Thea.
Mrs Phibbs’ eyebrows raised further, and her bottom hit the sink as she stepped further backwards.
‘What now?’ asked Thea, both wary of it but beside herself with excitement to be experimenting with Martha again. ‘Will it wander off?’
Mrs Phibbs made a little noise.
‘Nope,’ said Martha. ‘But I do want to test its irritability.’ She disappeared into the kitchen.
Thea stepped back again. ‘You think it’s cross?’ She raised her voice so Martha could hear her in the next room. ‘Because we put it in water or because it’s below stairs?’
Mrs Phibbs looked horrified. ‘What you anger it for?’
Martha rounded the door again, kettle in hand which, from the look of the cloth she handled it with, had just boiled on the stove. ‘Not intentionally,’ she said kindly, lifting the kettle onto the bench.
‘Is there only one?’ asked Mrs Phibbs, looking around her as if a herd of angry sponges might descend from the ceiling.
‘Just one, Mrs Phibbs,’ Martha reassured.
Then Mrs Phibbs looked straight at her. ‘Won’t it get lonely?’
Thea and Martha stared at her.
‘Well, you said it was alive, that’s all.’
‘Well, we’re almost sure it is,’ said Martha, her forehead furrowing a little. ‘And not that type of alive.’
‘How many different types of alive are there?’ asked Mrs Phibbs.
Martha opened her mouth to answer and then shut it again.
Thea’s mind tried to answer the question too and ended up in a tangle.
She knew people were alive meat, and so were animals, presumably, as they seemed to have thoughts.
Musket certainly had lots of thoughts and the capacity to love and to hate and to get lonely.
But what about plants? They moved, but nobody was sure if they thought or not.
They weren’t meat and certainly didn’t get angry at people like Musket did.
Or Mrs Phibbs for that matter. But this didn’t look like it was made of plant matter either.
She drifted back to the room as she became aware that the housekeeper was looking between them.
‘You are not certain? Either of you?’ Mrs Phibbs asked, her eyes flicking from them to the sponge and back.
She lowered her voice to a whisper, presumably in case it heard.
‘So, you have brought a thing that comes from foreign parts and grows to three times its size in cold water and that you think is some type of alive, but you aren’t sure, to my scullery?
!’ Her voice raised an octave across the sentence. ‘What might happen next?’
‘Mrs Phibbs,’ soothed Martha as she peered closely at the squashy mass. ‘This is an extremely simple organism which is static in the sea where it usually lives. It is not going to eat you, poison you or rampage around your house stealing the best silver.’
Mrs Phibbs still looked suspicious, and Thea felt a little abashed. Who knew what oddities would come out of the tropics next?
‘Fine,’ she said a little huffily. ‘What now?’
‘Now, we boil it.’ Thea knew she looked horrified.
‘Only a little bit,’ qualified Martha, afraid to receive another admonishment.
Thea stood back, and Mrs Phibbs looked like she was ready to get in the sink.
Martha poured a little of the boiling water onto a portion of the sponge, and it recoiled immediately.
Thea gasped, reached for it, and threw it back into the pail of water.
She watched as it returned to its cold-water shape.
‘Did you hurt it?’ she asked Martha, aware of the accusation in her voice. ‘I know what you said but it did recoil.’
Martha pressed the thumb and forefinger of her left hand into her eyes.
‘It is a difficult concept to explain, but the sponge is made up of material which, when it comes into contact with boiling water.’ She began to reach for the kettle to make her point.
‘Has a tendency to… Ow!’ she exclaimed, having grasped the handle of the kettle without the cloth which was clearly still roasting hot from the fire.
‘Oh,’ said Thea, looking around for something to quell the burning. She did the only thing she could think of. ‘Come here,’ she said, grasping Martha’s wrist, dragging her to the bucket and plunging her hand into it, along with the sponge. Mrs Phibbs squeaked and covered her eyes.
Martha stared at Thea and then panic clouded her eyes. ‘AAARRrrrgh!’ she screamed, the bucket rocking on the table as her arm thrust backwards and forwards, water splashing everywhere.
Thea saw Mrs Phibbs start for Martha at the same time she did. ‘My lady!’ shouted the housekeeper and grasped at Martha’s other arm. Thea had hold of her other side and was about to pull her away when Martha collapsed in laughter.
‘Oh, my goodness,’ she wheezed, delighted she had fooled them. ‘Your faces!’
Thea and Mrs Phibbs stared at her. Now tears of mirth streaked her cheeks. She looked between them and presumably saw lingering horror.
‘I am fine,’ she reassured them, trying to get her laughter under control as she removed her hand from the bucket. It was intact, Thea noted with relief.
‘My lady,’ chastised Mrs Phibbs, looking like she might drop from the shock at any moment. ‘I, well, I…’
‘Do you need to sit down, Mrs Phibbs?’ asked Thea, throwing an admonishing glance at Martha. ‘That was quite mean, Lady Foxmore.’
‘I’ll say,’ said Mrs Phibbs, straightening and beginning to compose herself. ‘I thought it had your arm savaged, My Lady.’
‘Not this time,’ said Martha. ‘But I do think I better keep my hand in here.’
Mrs Phibbs braved a peer into the bucket from a distance.
‘I’ll run you a fresh one,’ she said, turning back to the sink.
‘That’ll blister if you’re not careful.’ Thea saw Martha start to protest but then wince as she flexed her hand.
Thea peered at it under the water. There was a nasty burn on one finger.
She tutted. ‘I’ll go and get some calendula and a bandage from the nursery while Mrs Phibbs sorts the water.
Abigail is always hurting herself, so Annie keeps a stock.
They’ll be out with Mr Fenwick, so it won’t take me a minute.
Do not take your hand out of that bucket.
See to it, Mrs Phibbs.’ Martha pursed her lips but looked as if she would do as she was told.
Thea took the few steps up the corridor to the back door of the nursery. It was handily situated so Annie could have access to both the servant’s quarters, the kitchen and the main house at once. Thea swung the door open and was met by a sudden squeak and a commotion on the other side.
She stood for a minute, while she assessed the situation.
Annie and Frankie now stood, near the window and very purposefully apart.
It seemed that a few seconds ago, they had both been on the floor together, before they had scrambled like mountain goats at the sound of the door.
The guilty looks on their faces led her to a conclusion she had not been expecting.
‘Ah, hello,’ she said, considering that someone had to speak.
But she couldn’t quite think of where to go from there.
She could leave, but she still needed the salve and bandage for Martha.
She cleared her throat. ‘I am terribly sorry to disturb,’ she said, hearing her accent become even more proper in her embarrassment.
‘But I simply require some items from the medical box.’ She stalked to the shelves where she knew they were kept, rummaged around and, mercifully, found them quickly before returning to the door.
‘Please,’ she said to the figures, still frozen by the window, ‘do not stop on my account.’
Could she have said anything more mortifying, she wondered as she tried to close the door behind her, but then she felt it resist. She turned and found Frankie standing there.
‘It isn’t how it looks,’ said Frankie, a desperately worried look on her face. Thea sought to reassure her.
‘I assure you both,’ she said, looking between them in a manner she hoped was calming, ‘that you can be confident of my discretion and I have no problem at all with… well.’ She motioned between them and saw Annie’s eyes widen.
‘We didn’t want anyone to think we had been shirking work,’ said Annie, still a little shaken. ‘And we both spoke about it and said we knew you wouldn’t mind but some of the others might get jealous.’
‘Well, that is – ah – bold,’ said Thea, not quite understanding.
‘And we were using the greenhouse but there’s a risk of people seeing,’ said Annie. Thea blinked at her.
‘And it does make sense to do it here where Frankie can practise as loudly as she likes without anyone hearing,’ said Annie.
Thea took a breath, but she couldn’t think, for the life of her, what words would be appropriate, and so she let it out again.
Her gentle and attentive governess and the gardener.
Being loud in the nursery while the children were out with Mr Fenwick.
Who would have thought? She looked to Frankie, who still stood by the door, hands over her face.
‘Annie is teaching me to read,’ she said quietly.
‘So, they’ve been at it for weeks?’ asked Martha, as Thea applied the salve to her finger in the scullery. ‘What a delightful pair they are.’ Mrs Phibbs had made a hasty exit on Thea’s return, presumably happy to be out of the presence of the sponge.
‘I’m so glad to see it,’ said Thea, who had avoided mentioning her complete misunderstanding in the telling of the tale. ‘You should have seen the look on Frankie’s face – she was delighted to be able to read the words aloud.’
‘But only from the older books?’ asked Martha.
‘Well,’ said Thea gently applying the bandage to the finger and beginning to wind. ‘The most yellow parchment, apparently. Says it stops the letters jigging around on the page and so she can read them. Annie has started writing books on her own parchment, just for Frankie to read.’
Martha looked as touched as Thea was. ‘That’s delightful. And it will make her work outside so much easier.’
‘Agreed,’ said Thea, as she dropped Martha’s hand. ‘Done.’
Martha studied the bandaging work. ‘Not bad at all,’ she said, pushing off from the table. ‘Thank you.’ She looked around and dropped a gentle kiss onto Thea’s lips. ‘Shall we see how Crumpacker is getting on in the library?
Thea allowed Martha to go on ahead and then peered into the bucket, still on the bench. The sponge sat at the bottom, appearing unconcerned.
‘Sorry,’ she whispered to it, just in case.