Chapter 21
The woman swiftly disappeared through the narrow doorway. Before I had time to wonder at the chance she’d have such books, she returned with three in her hand.
She laid the books side by side on top of the others. “These were quite popular in their day.”
One was similar to the book I held, though clearly older and with a different picture, not as detailed. The second had only a blank red cover, and the third’s cover was cracked and worn but still showed the colors of an ocean, rocky beach, and nearby cliffs.
“How can you be certain?” I asked in bewilderment.
“Because I’ve had this shop forty years now, dear.
My father had it before me. I recall what everyone wanted thirty years ago like it was yesterday.
People are still reading The Heir of Redclyffe, aren’t they?
I knew this lady.” She tapped the book with the bright cover.
“Wrote quite a number of picture books and little folktales for children, but this was the only one she did about the seaside.”
I tried to imagine Daniel as a tiny boy, sitting on his mother’s lap, or perhaps his nanny’s, as she read out to him from this book.
The same book he then clutched as his only reminder of his mother and father when he found himself left at Mrs. Kerr’s.
I hoped she was as good to him as Mr. Patterson claimed.
I opened the book and turned the pages. I found another simple story about a boy who lived at the seaside, explaining all the things to be seen to another lad, who’d come from a city.
The boy Daniel would have gazed at the few drawings inside and imagined the seaside, while his mother’s voice was soft in his ears.
My vivid imaginings made my eyes fill. I closed the book, blinking the moisture away.
“I don’t suppose you’d remember who you sold these books to, all those years ago?” I asked without much hope.
The woman’s smile shone out. “Dear me, no. My memory is plenty sharp, but those are details no one would recall. However, I still have the ledgers from those days. Give me a few moments to dig them out.”
“I don’t want to put you to any trouble,” I began.
“No trouble at all, dear. As you can see, I am not overrun with custom today.” She gestured toward the inner door. “Come back with me. I’ll make us a cup of tea.”
* * *
In another quarter of an hour, I was settled in a small, dusty room with my feet on a footstool, sipping tea that was not too bitter.
The woman told me her name was Mrs. Davies, and she now knew that I was Mrs. Holloway, a cook from Mount Street, and had a daughter called Grace who lived with my friends.
She also knew that I was often flummoxed by my mistress, Mrs. Bywater, had begun selling my baked goods at a stand in Portobello Road, and was engaged to my beau, Daniel, who had a son of his own.
I do not know why I opened up to her so, but I found Mrs. Davies congenial, kind, and easy to speak to.
She did find ledgers from the year 1854 and also from the years before and after for good measure. I sipped tea while she ran her mitted hands along the pages and actually found a number of entries for the books in question and who they were sold to.
“I can copy these out for you,” Mrs. Davies offered, then peered shrewdly at me. “If you tell me why you wish to know.”
“Because I have a mad idea that I can find a man’s parents by discovering if they once purchased a child’s book when he was a babe.”
When stated, it did sound daft. I also risked losing my post by lingering in this shop, but I was comfortable, Mrs. Davies was a friendly and interesting woman, and I could not bring myself to leave just yet.
“I see.” Mrs. Davies was sympathetic. “A good friend, is he, this man?”
“My beau,” I confessed. “He doesn’t know his own origins, and that distresses him. I want to help him find the truth, though I know we likely never will.”
“Which might be for the best,” Mrs. Davies said. “The past sometimes should remain buried. The truth might be too painful.”
“But isn’t it better that he know? Always wondering has to be even more painful.”
Mrs. Davies shook her head. “Not necessarily. I’ve been alive a bit longer than you, dear.
I’ve borne four children and buried one of them, and my husband is gone, as well.
My other three children now have young ones of their own, and they are the sweetest lads and lasses you can imagine.
I have learned much about life through all this and know that what we have now is precious.
Digging up the past can muck that about. ”
I took a thoughtful sip of tea, my heart aching for her lost child and her apparent grief for her husband. “I suppose that is true. But while my past held some awful things, much good came out of it too.” Joe had been horrible, but Grace was the joy of my existence.
“Life is good and bad all mixed up, neither one nor the other,” Mrs. Davies said. “When you’re in bad times, you convince yourself that good can never come again, but it does. Even so, there is no need to open the spigot and let the bad pour in to drown out the good you have at present.”
“I should leave it alone, you mean.” I sighed. “I have tried to convince myself of this. My beau had such an awful childhood that I suppose I want to show him he was loved once.”
“I think you should show him he is loved now,” Mrs. Davies stated.
“Life goes by in the blink of an eye. Hold those you love close while you can. However”—her eyes twinkled—“I can see that you are, like me, a lady of great determination. I will copy out those names for you. It might take me a while. Shall I send the list to you at Mount Street?”
“If you have it delivered to the kitchen door,” I said quickly. “I’m not sure what Mrs. Bywater would think if she intercepted such a thing.”
“She sounds like an interfering busybody,” Mrs. Davies declared. “As am I.”
“If you are, it is in a kind way,” I said. “Mrs. Bywater simply likes controlling people.”
“If she is disappointed with her life, or constantly trying to be greater than she actually is, then I can see why. But never worry, my dear. I will send it to you with the greatest discretion.”
“I can only thank you.” I set my cup aside and rose. “I must get back before they send out a horde of footmen to search for me.”
“You can thank me with a treat when I visit you on the Portobello Road. I’ll shut up my shop for a time on Thursday and come and see you.”
“I would be delighted,” I said with sincerity. “It has been a fine thing to meet you, Mrs. Davies.”
“I’ve observed you tramping up and down this road for years, going in and out of the grocers along the way. I’m pleased you finally came into my shop. Now, how about taking a book away with you for your little girl? You can pay me back with a pastry or two.”
* * *
I returned home, armed with a slim novel for Grace, more supplies for my upcoming week at the market, and the knowledge that I might have made a friend.
I was certain Mrs. Davies’s information would come to nothing—the odds were very long, indeed—but I was grateful to her for even contemplating helping me.
It occurred to me that the number of bookshops in London was large, and the chances that we’d find the one into which Daniel’s family, or a friend of that family, had gone to purchase a book thirty years ago were impossibly slim.
However, working at possibly futile tasks felt more satisfying to me than simply sitting and waiting for the answer to fall into my lap, or giving up entirely.
“Mrs. Bywater asked about you,” Tess said when I returned. “I told her you was at the market. Did you find much?”
“Enough.” I slid the book from my basket into the drawer in the dresser where I also kept my notebook and began unloading the small bunch of parsley and net bag of grapes I’d purchased for verisimilitude.
“Well, she’s unhappy about Lady Cynthia staying out all night and coming home hungover.” Tess tore lettuce for a salad with angry jerks. “Is trying to blame you, I gather.”
“She stayed the night with Miss Townsend.” I joined Tess in sorting the greens, liking the cool, fresh scent that wafted to us.
“She didn’t want answers from me, only to know where you’d nipped off to.” Tess sloshed the greens in a bowl of water and shook them out. “She’s been even more interfering than usual, of late.”
I thought about Mrs. Davies’s assessment that Mrs. Bywater tried to be queen of all she surveyed to make up for disappointment that her husband had no ambition beyond his present state and that the lordship his sister had married was a feckless spendthrift. Mrs. Davies likely had the right of it.
“We should have some compassion for her,” I told Tess. “She wants to be a lady of the manor and can only make do with what she has.”
Tess stared at me as though I’d run mad, then shook her head, lifted another bunch of lettuce, and began ripping into it.
Mrs. Bywater did not come down again, thankfully, but she did send an order via Mrs. Redfern that I was to make dinner for six tonight. Cynthia would be staying in.
“Mrs. Bywater said this firmly,” Mrs. Redfern told me while Tess and I were working on supper’s main course. “She is not to go out tonight, and the mistress asks you to restrain her if she tries to run out the kitchen door.”
I paused in the act of slicing potatoes into perfect discs. “I am to tackle her ladyship and drag her back inside, am I?”
Mrs. Redfern sniffed, no happier with Mrs. Bywater than I was. “I can only convey her wishes. Between you and me, the mistress will drive her ladyship to ruin. Lady Cynthia is a restless soul, and if they are not careful, she will be off, eloping with some blackguard who will drag her into misery.”
I thought Cynthia more sensible than that, but it was true she often expressed much exasperation with her aunt and uncle.
Cynthia was now a spinster, and the world mocked such women.
She’d found refuge with her friends, but I knew she chafed at the restrictions put on her because she did not have a Mrs. before her name.
“I will keep an eye out, Mrs. Redfern,” I said.
Mrs. Redfern nodded and glided away.
I hoped Cynthia could take the message I asked to Miss Townsend, if her aunt was curtailing her, but knowing Cynthia, she’d somehow manage.
Six for supper meant extra guests. Mrs. Bywater must have spontaneously invited friends again.
They arrived when the window darkened. I went out when I heard a hansom stop, climbing halfway up the outside stairs, curious as to who was coming.
Mr. Fielding stepped out of the hansom, paid the driver, then settled his coat and hat. He saw me on the steps and gave me a mock salute before pasting on his obsequious expression, and entered the house, the front door held open by a footman.
Another hansom pulled up behind the first, disgorging a primly dressed man and woman I did not recognize. Cynthia would have much to put up with at the table, I decided, though Mr. Fielding would no doubt keep her amused.
To my surprise, Mr. Fielding did not attempt to descend to the kitchen under the guise of praising my cooking that evening, to speak to me. I’d assumed he’d gotten himself invited in order to do so, but Tess and I cleared up the supper things and had a meal of our own without him appearing.
He departed when the other guests did, according to one of the footmen who’d stationed himself on the outer stairs. None of the staff could retire until the visitors were gone, and the footman yelled back inside that they’d left at last.
The footman then raced up the back stairs with the other footmen and maids, who’d be expected to put the house to rights before they retired. Mr. Davis followed them, admonishing the footmen to be quiet, for pity’s sake.
Once they were gone, I sent Tess to bed and lingered, in case Daniel, or even Mr. Fielding, appeared. Neither did, and the house quieted, the rest of the staff finally climbing wearily to their beds.
Just as I was about to give up, someone banged on the back door. I opened it to find Albie, brimming with agitation.
“Did as you asked, missus,” he announced.
“Went all over Blackfriars and up to Hoxton Square. I have mates all over the East End.” His eyes held worry.
“One of them told me your man, McAdam, was taken up by some blokes and hustled into a carriage near Victoria Park. Them blokes work for Naismith, missus. I think McAdam is for it.”