Chapter Twelve
For nine months as an infant, Eleanor was sent to the small school attached to St Mary’s Church in Wimbledon, but she didn’t learn to read.
She knew, even at the age of seven, that her school fees stretched the household budget, so she tried her hardest but still the letters bounced as if possessed by the devil.
The school master, a tough-faced old minister called Reverend Lindley ruled the classroom with the aid of a thick tawse, and Eleanor was called to the slate board almost every day to be beaten for her failings, which included not memorising her letters and continually leading with her left, or ‘sinister’, hand.
‘You must work harder, Eleanor Thrale,’ the minister snarled.
Eleanor’s older brothers had distinguished themselves in the same classroom, one even securing a position as a junior clerk at the docks.
Eleanor, unable to sound the letters, was left with no illusion that she was the Odd Thrale Out, as the reverend put it. ‘Quite a disappointment.’
Tramping along Princes Street now in the dark, Eleanor feels the same as she did walking up to the slate board to be punished.
Today, in addition to the unwelcome demands of the gentlemen, the girl is further perturbed by her mistress who, it seems, is no longer behaving in a logical fashion.
The changes in Mrs Moore’s routine, Eleanor realises, are not down to the location.
Her mistress remained regular on the ship and during holidays with Mr Moore.
Here, however, she’s suddenly up all hours, reading musty old books, consulting maps, making unexpected requests of the kitchen and deciding spontaneously to visit a castle.
It wouldn’t surprise Eleanor if Araminta McKenzie Moore has no intention of going home to Richmond.
She seems to be enjoying herself. This, of course, is exactly what the gentlemen require Eleanor to report.
But Eleanor has decided that she will not do so.
She is at heart the same stubborn seven-year-old who would not explain to her teacher that the letters kept moving.
She must somehow get out of her current fix and do so without further betraying Mrs Moore.
Her first thought remains to run, but she hasn’t the heart for it, given what the mistress said after the funeral.
She can think of no easy way out as she cuts up South St David Street and turns into the back entrance of Mr McGhie’s shop on Rose Street Lane.
She pauses before giving a sharp rap at the door, and the gentleman from Kew answers.
‘Miss Thrale,’ he says, ‘come in.’
In the backroom Mr McGhie has clearly taken a good deal to drink.
As Eleanor enters, he flings himself into a wooden chair as if this were a feat worthy of a circus acrobat.
A hunk of bread lies on the table with a few shucked oysters and three bottles of Bordeaux, only one of which remains upright.
The gentleman from Kew sips from a thick glass.
Eleanor, like all good servants, can sense an atmosphere.
The gentlemen have been quarrelling. She must be conciliatory.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I couldn’t get away earlier.’
‘What has your mistress been up to, girl?’ the gentleman from Kew snaps, clearly uninterested in pleasantries.
‘Nothing, sir,’ Eleanor replies steadily. ‘We cleared my lady’s great aunt’s clothes into chests. She plans to remake some of the dresses.’
‘Who has she had contact with?’
Eleanor shakes her head. ‘Nobody, sir. She’s hardly so much as written home since the day we arrived.’
The gentleman’s eyes are hard. He’ll not be taken on a jaunt around the houses.
‘So where did you go this morning, Eleanor?’ he asks. ‘In the carriage. In the rain.’
Eleanor’s lips tighten. They’re watching the house then. There’s nothing for it but to admit at least some of what Mrs Moore has been up to.
‘My lady wanted to return the colonel’s visit from the other day. The one I told you of. He gave her a tour of the castle, though tourists are not allowed.’
The gentlemen’s eyes meet. ‘What sights did Colonel Fraser show your lady?’
‘Witches were burned on the Esplanade, sir. She saw where that had happened. And some kind of mess, is it called?’
The gentleman nods. ‘Anything else?’
‘The garrison chapel, sir.’
‘Not the crown? The honours?’
Eleanor takes a punt that whoever has been spying on Mrs Moore was not able to follow them inside the castle’s walls, else what is she doing here? ‘No, sir,’ she says.
Mr McGhie grabs the neck of the only upright bottle and takes a swig. ‘I don’t trust her,’ he snarls, pointing at Eleanor, then slams down the Bordeaux. The other gentleman clearly agrees but remains silent. ‘I’m minded to beat it out of her. You just watch me, Harry.’
Eleanor doesn’t flinch. She knows how to take a beating for she suffered the minister’s endless swipes with the tawse.
‘Was there no talk of jewels, Miss Thrale? Be careful to consider your reply,’ the gentleman says, his tone colder than the weather beyond the back door.
Eleanor holds her ground. ‘My mistress does not have a deal of jewellery, sir. She dresses plainly. There’s her wedding ring, I suppose, and her mother-of-pearl combs. And a jet mourning brooch. You said you weren’t planning to rob her.’
‘We’re not. And you’ve not answered my question. Was there talk of the honours?’
‘I don’t know what you mean by the honours, sir.’
‘The crown, you stupid girl,’ McGhie cuts in, slapping his hand on the table.
Eleanor bites her lip and the wine merchant, frustrated, lunges at her, but he’s slow in drink and she dodges him; the nimble remnants of growing up around brothers.
The other gentleman interposes himself. Both men glare, one holding back the other, she realises, because if she’s to be beaten, he wants to order it.
‘Get out,’ he spits. ‘You’ll come again tomorrow.’
Eleanor doesn’t need to be told twice and runs for the door. As she does so she hears them bickering. ‘Dear God, McGhie,’ the gentleman bursts out. ‘You’ve no control.’
‘Damn you, Harry Thom,’ McGhie parries. ‘The girl is hopeless. Why did you choose her?’
In seconds Eleanor is back on the freezing lane and it’s only then she realises the gentleman didn’t pay her shillings nor fetch a cab and she must trudge empty-handed the mile back to Glenfinlas Street.
At the first junction, three children outside a public house play hopscotch by the light of a tallow lamp.
She glances over her shoulder. The gentlemen have not pursued her.
Accordingly, she slows her pace and wonders if Mr McGhie plans to murder her.
He said so in the graveyard. The way he swooped round the table’s edge was violent.
But the other gentleman, she realises, is violent too, only he masks it better.
They are bullies. She doesn’t want to go back tomorrow or any other day.
Her mistress, as far as she can see, is blameless.
As she reaches Charlotte Square, flickering yellow light is cast onto the wide pavement through cracks in the curtains.
These slices afford views of toffs at long dining tables in rooms with blood-red walls.
At the kerb, carriages wait. Two drivers warm their hands on a brazier set on the flagstones at the far south corner.
Beyond, she can see the top of Glenfinlas Street.
It’s odd how accustomed she’s become to Edinburgh. She can find her way in the dark.
In the basement area of the McKenzie house, the two maids-of-all-work giggle under the entrance stair. It’s the most sound Eleanor has heard the girls make since she arrived. As she descends the shallow stone stairs, one fumbles to hide a white clay pipe they’ve been sharing.
‘You don’t need to shift that. I won’t tell,’ Eleanor smiles. ‘Do they mind you smoking?’
‘Cook says it’s an ungodly habit,’ one of the girls admits. The other brings the pipe back out and puffs on it, passing it good-naturedly to Eleanor.
‘Thanks,’ Eleanor says. The girls move along the wooden bench and she sits and takes a long, slow puff of the golden shag.
‘Where’ve you been, Thrale?’ one asks.
Eleanor of course cannot say. ‘Exploring the city. The castle is beautiful. Are you from here?’
‘Liberton,’ the second girl says. ‘It’s only a village.’
‘I’m from a village too. Wimbledon,’ Eleanor admits. She thinks how nice it would be to be in Wimbledon, rather than in this awful fix.
All three young women sit for a few seconds, contemplating what they have in common.
‘Won’t your lady need you?’ the first girl asks.
Eleanor shakes her head. ‘There’s little for me to do. I’ll help her pack, I suppose, when she’s done.’
‘What was the castle like?’
‘Full of soldiers,’ Eleanor says, feeling better.
There is a pause and all three of them laugh uproariously.
‘Cook would especially hate that, wouldn’t she?’ Eleanor adds.
And they laugh some more.
There are few moments that have changed Eleanor’s life.
One was when her parents agreed she could remove from school.
Another was when the gentleman sought her out and placed her with Mrs Moore’s household.
And, as Eleanor will later come to consider it, there’s this moment, right here under the stairs when the second girl chimes, the pipe’s glow lighting her face, ‘Where does she go?’
Just like that.
‘Go?’ Eleanor repeats. ‘Who?’
‘Your lady. At night? Twice now she’s left the house. Douglas said she was in St Giles’ for almost an hour the first time and never went to the lawyer’s. And the second time she just walked out of the place, but not like a lady, more like a . . .’
‘Sneaker,’ the other girl adds, relishing the word.
‘A sneaky sneaker,’ the first girl confirms.
Eleanor realises this means of the handful of nights they’ve spent in Edinburgh, Mrs Moore has gone out twice without her noticing.
Up until now, she’s thought she’s been defending her mistress against the gentleman.
She’s thought Araminta was innocent and Mr McGhie was some kind of fool.
The gentleman from Kew, too, perhaps not a fool but an erstwhile lover.
Now it comes to her that, despite all appearances, maybe her mistress is indeed up to something.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she says. ‘The mistress loves to walk. She strides out every day in Richmond. Miles along the river.’
‘I think she has a fancy man,’ the first girl giggles. ‘I would, if I were the mistress.’
The second girl punches her friend’s arm. ‘Agnes,’ she says. ‘You wouldnae.’
‘Don’t be daft, Hester. It’s only the likes of us that don’t get away wi’ it,’ the first girl declares. ‘When Douglas worked for the Macdonalds, one of their cousins came. French, of course, and married. He says you wouldnae believe the comings and goings. At night,’ she adds ominously.
Agnes and Eleanor lean forward, for these are details relished by maids across the world.
Hester looks smug as she pulls on the pipe.
She holds out for a good five seconds and is about to spill further beans when the basement door creaks open suddenly to reveal Cook outlined in the thin light from the kitchen hallway.
Hester nearly falls off the end of the bench.
‘Lasses!’ Cook pronounces. ‘Whit have I told the pair of you? And you, Thrale, should be ashamed of yersel’! Out here encouraging the housemaids. Puffing like lums, the lot of you! Gie me it.’
She holds out her hand and Hester reluctantly gives her the pipe, which Cook takes between her thumb and forefinger as if it’s a dead fish that has turned in the heat. ‘It’s a disgusting habit! You know how I feel about it.’
In Richmond, the cook is not in charge of the housemaids. The housemaids (three of them) are under the instruction of Mrs Rhodes, the housekeeper. The question flickers across Eleanor’s mind: why doesn’t this household have a Mrs Rhodes? But so much in Scotland is different from Richmond.
The girls troop guiltily inside, the maids sent straight to bed, the toothless kitchen drudge watching from her straw mattress beside the stove.
‘Really,’ says Cook, ‘you should have more sense, Thrale.’ However, she cannot order Eleanor around, even though a ladies’ maid does not trump a cook, certainly not down here, in the kitchen.
‘I’ll see to my lady,’ Eleanor says.
‘Here,’ Cook thrusts a liquorice stick in her direction. ‘The mistress will not want to sniff your smelly tobacco mouth.’
Eleanor does not tell her that Mrs Moore stank out the drawing room the other night with her great aunt’s cigars. In any case, she likes the taste of liquorice. She turns to go.
‘Yon tobacco’s terrible for the palette,’ Cook calls after her. ‘You’ll never be able to taste the seasoning if you continue. Go on, your lady will be missing you.’
But Eleanor does not attend Mrs Moore, or at least not directly.
Nor does she go to bed. Instead, she hovers in the first-floor hallway out of sight, in a doorway, chewing absent-mindedly, savouring the aniseed flavour with her back against the door jamb in a disgraceful display of poor deportment.
Dinner has been removed on a tray by Brodie long since.
Upstairs, Mrs Moore’s sheet was turned down even before Eleanor left the house that evening, the fire in the green bedroom already stoked.
A glass of milk and a glass of watered brandy on the bedside, like always.
Eleanor waits and thinks this is why her lady has said she doesn’t need help to undress.
She listens as the clock on the mantle chimes ten times behind the door.
Then, she pulls back as Mrs Moore creeps silently downstairs wearing her green, fur-lined cape and kidskin winter gloves.
Eleanor follows. Right out of the front door like a lady, silently onto the flagstones of Glenfinlas Street.
Hanging back so the men around the brazier cannot see, Eleanor watches Mrs Moore cut down the alleyway at the near side of St George’s, and staying in the shadows, she goes down there too.