Sapphire Battersea Read online

  I shivered. I did not want to think of the hospital any more. I might not be living the life of my dreams, publishing my memoirs and providing for dear Mama – but my new life as a servant with Mrs Briskett and Sarah in Mr Monkey Buchanan’s house was so, so, so much better than being shut up in the cold, forbidding hospital. And my Sunday afternoons with Bertie were positively delightful.

  I wondered whether to start a new memoir book now that Mr Buchanan had purloined my old one. His wastepaper basket was often stuffed with crumpled discarded pages. I could straighten them out, maybe even smooth them with Sarah’s flatiron. Then I could stitch them together, strike through every sentence of his spidery scribble, and start my own memoirs on the blank backs.

  No, perhaps I would always be too sharply truthful for autobiography. I could attempt a work of fiction instead – a novel about a young girl with eyes as blue as sapphires – but she would be tall and shapely and have tumbling blonde curls. Perhaps she had been brought up in a strict and severe (unnamed) institution and cruelly treated by terrible matrons. She’d be sent off at the tender age of fourteen to earn her living as a maid, in spite of her intelligence and obvious potential, and feel cast down by the dreary routine of being a general servant. But then she meets her true sweetheart, a former workhouse inmate, now cheerily earning his living as … a baker’s boy …? I blushed in the darkness of the scullery, ashamed to have let myself get so carried away. I blew out my guttering candle and tried to settle.

  I heard Mrs Briskett’s footsteps as she paced backwards and forwards across the scrubbed flags of the kitchen floor. Every now and then she muttered to herself and sighed. It was clear that Sarah was still not home.

  Then I heard the clop of hooves outside in the road, anxious voices, and sudden footsteps. There was a knock on the back door, then Mrs Briskett’s sudden exclamation:

  ‘Oh my Lord, Sarah, whatever’s happened!’

  I jumped out of bed and ran into the kitchen. There was Sarah, swaying in her purple Sunday best, her eyes rolling, her mouth open, propped up by Mr Brown and a cabbie. Good heavens, was she really drunk?

  ‘Sarah, Sarah, Sarah, look at the state of you!’ said Mrs Briskett, seizing hold of her and pushing her onto a kitchen chair.

  ‘She was certainly in no state to get herself home,’ said Mr Brown. ‘I had to take it upon myself to call a cab for her.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Mr Brown. Oh, Sarah, you silly girl! I knew this would happen!’

  ‘She paid for a special materialization – and it worked, it worked tremendously. Sarah was ecstatic. There’s no other word to describe it; ecstatic! But then it all became too much for her, and she went into a swoon, quite overcome. She rendered herself incapable of getting out of the house, let alone coming all the way home. I had to practically carry her out of the cab – and she’s not a light woman,’ Mr Brown said ruefully.

  ‘Oh dear, I do hope you haven’t done yourself an injury, Mr Brown. Thank you so much for looking after our Sarah. Please allow me to pay for the cab,’ said Mrs Briskett.

  ‘No, no, I won’t hear of it. What’s a cab fare between friends? But I’m just giving you fair warning – on Sunday evenings Sarah really needs to be accompanied by a lady friend who can look after her, perhaps loosen her clothing if she’s overcome once more. I’ve tried my best, but there are limits to the attention I can decently pay her. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Clear as day, Mr Brown,’ said Mrs Briskett. ‘Thank you very much, gentlemen. I’ll take over now.’

  She bustled about Sarah, undoing her bonnet and the collar of her dress. Mr Brown and the cabbie wiped the sweat off their brows and made a hasty retreat.

  Mrs Briskett frowned at me. ‘Don’t just stand there gawping, Hetty. Run for the smelling salts – in the cupboard over there.’

  I rummaged in the cupboard, while Mrs Briskett plunged her hand right inside Sarah’s bodice. There was a sudden snap, and Sarah breathed out and almost overflowed her Sunday dress.

  ‘There, I’ve got her stays undone – that should help,’ said Mrs Briskett. ‘Where are those salts, Hetty?’

  I thrust a packet of Saxa salt at her and she sighed irritably.

  ‘Smelling salts, you stupid girl. The dark blue bottle in the corner!’

  She grabbed the bottle from me, uncorked it, and waved it under Sarah’s nose. Sarah’s head jerked, her eyes blinked, and she let out a gasp.

  ‘There now, Sarah, take a deep breath. Oh my Lord, you’ve given us such a fright!’

  ‘Is she very drunk, Mrs Briskett?’ I asked.

  ‘Drunk?’ Mrs Briskett stared at me. ‘Hetty Feather, what a thing to say!’

  ‘Drunk!’ Sarah echoed. This accusation shocked her back to total consciousness. ‘The very idea! I haven’t had a drop of alcohol since Christmas, apart from a dribble of sherry in your trifle, Mrs B, and no one can count that against me.’

  ‘Now, now, take no notice of the stupid girl. Of course we know you’re not drunk. Don’t go upsetting yourself further. I’ll make a nice cup of tea to settle you. Come on now.’

  Mrs Briskett nodded at me to put the kettle on the range, while she knelt down and unbuttoned Sarah’s boots. ‘There now, wiggle your tootsies.’

  ‘You’re ever so good to me, Mrs B.’

  ‘Well, you’re a dear girl, even if you get carried away by strange fancies. It’s not good for you, though, getting yourself in such a state. Look at you, swooning all the way home! These sessions are getting too much for you. You’ll do yourself a mischief. Plus you’re spending all your wretched savings! Promise me you won’t go any more.’

  ‘Oh, I have to go, Mrs B! Tonight was so wonderful, a true miracle! I saw her! I felt her hands upon me! My own dear mother!’ Sarah breathed, and then her eyes rolled as she swooned again.

  ‘Her mother?’ I said as Mrs Briskett wafted the smelling salts under her nose once more. The sharp stench made my own eyes water. ‘But I thought her mother was dead!’

  ‘Exactly. Dead and buried. And that’s where she should stay,’ said Mrs Briskett.

  ‘You mean … she’s a ghost?’ I whispered.

  ‘Something similar. I don’t think it’s right or Christian. We shouldn’t meddle with ghouls and ghosts. If we get them to pop out at us, how do we know we can ever be shot of them?’ Mrs Briskett looked all about her, as if an eerie spectral being were lurking in a corner of the kitchen.

  ‘She’s not a ghoul or a ghost!’ Sarah murmured, mopping her forehead. ‘She’s a beautiful spirit. She speaks to me through Madame Berenice.’

  ‘Is she a circus lady?’ I asked, thinking of dear Madame Adeline.

  Sarah looked affronted, but Mrs Briskett nodded grimly.

  ‘She’s exactly like a circus lady, performing her tricks while Sarah and all her silly cronies sit around in a circle, marvelling. And paying through the nose for the experience,’ she said.

  Sarah rose unsteadily to her feet. ‘I’ll thank you to keep your opinions to yourself, Mrs B. You’ve been very kind, but I’ll not stop to hear you talk of Madame Berenice in such a manner. She’s a saint of a woman. She simply wants to comfort poor grieving souls by bringing us messages from the spirit world. It beats me why you won’t come too, and hear a few words from your own mother,’ she said.

  ‘I heard enough words from her when she was in this world – and few of them were kind ones,’ said Mrs Briskett. ‘Now sit down again, Sarah, or you’ll fall down.’

  ‘I’m going to my room,’ Sarah said, and staggered across the kitchen.

  ‘Oh, the obstinacy of the silly girl,’ said Mrs Briskett. ‘Come, Hetty, we’ll have to take hold of her or she’ll get halfway up those stairs and then tumble all the way down.’

  So the two of us battled with the bulging bulk of poor Sarah, heaving her right up to her room at the top of the house. We were all three breathing very heavily by this time.

  ‘There now!’ Mrs Briskett panted, propelling Sarah towards her bed. ‘Light her candle,