The Favoured Child twt-2 Read online

  ‘I know that shop,’ I said. I had thought it too dear, and Mama and I had gone elsewhere for gloves. They had been selling them at five pounds a pair. ‘You could buy a month’s work from a ploughing team for that,’ I had protested. Mama had laughed at the comparison, but we had bought our gloves in a cheaper shop.

  ‘Five shillin’s, they pays me!’ she said with pride. ‘Five whole shillin’s. And if the light is good, I can do a pair in three weeks’ working.’

  I said nothing. I said absolutely nothing. I looked from the exquisite glove to the white face of the Acre girl, and suddenly the embroidered rose did not look beautiful any more. It looked like a parasite growing over the glove, feeding on her pallor and hunger and ill health.

  ‘Are you one of the Acre Dench family?’ I asked softly. ‘Clary Dench is one of my best friends.’

  ‘Aye,’ she said, ‘Clary is my half-sister. Her and me have the same pa, but he never married my ma. When she died, I used to live with Clary’s ma, in the cottage at the end of the lane. But when Mr Blithe came, they had to let me go with him. There were too many of us to keep fed. I don’t blame them for it. Besides, he’d have had the law on them. The parish overseer said all the children he wanted had to go.’

  ‘I’ve come to take you home,’ I said. ‘Acre is different now. They’re getting it back to work. Ralph Megson has come home and he is managing it for my uncle, John MacAndrew. We will make a profit on the crops next year and Acre will have a share of the profit – not just wages, but fair shares. I wrote to Ralph Megson last night to tell him I had met Jimmy. May I write today and tell him that you will come home?’

  She glanced sideways at the gloves. Td have to finish them first,’ she said. ‘But then I’d go.’

  ‘Finish them!’ I exclaimed. ‘I’ll take them back to the shop for you myself. Why should you finish them when you are so ill and so poorly paid?’

  ‘I owe,’ she said.

  I stared at her blankly.

  ‘They pays me a pair behind,’ she said. ‘And I had to borrow from them to buy my own silks and needles. Aye, and pins. If I don’t finish the work and take it back, they’d have me for stealing the goods.’

  I was speechless. I looked around for James.

  ‘I think we can make that all right,’ he said gently. ‘If you would like Miss Lacey and me to take the gloves back to the shop for you as they are, we could discharge your debt.’

  I was about to protest, but James shot me a quick frown which warned me to be silent.

  ‘If it can be done,’ she said hesitantly.

  ‘Yes, it can,’ James said firmly. ‘And if the shop owner – Mrs Williams, is it? – is disappointed at losing such a good worker, well, it matters little, for you will never work for her again. You will be in Wideacre with your friends.’

  She nodded her head, and dropped back. She had been pale when we started talking, but she was deathly white now.

  ‘I will write, then,’ I said, looking around and speaking to them all. ‘But while we are waiting for a reply, we must find somewhere for you to live where you will all be more comfortable. And Rosie should see a doctor.’

  Jimmy and Nat were looking at me with hard sharp looks, wondering if I would keep my word.

  ‘May I make some arrangements for a lodging-house?’ I asked.

  They nodded, wordless.

  ‘I will go and see what I can do, and then I will come back. Will you still be in this afternoon?’ I asked.

  ‘Nat will be at work,’ Jimmy said, ‘but Rosie and Julie and me will be here. Julie and me work at nights.’

  ‘I will be back before dinner,’ I promised. ‘I brought you some money to buy your breakfasts.’ I had put half a crown in the pocket of my jacket and I put my hand in. The pocket was empty.

  James shook his head resignedly. ‘I didn’t see a thing,’ he said. ‘It was quickly done, whoever did it.’ He patted the inner jacket of his coat. ‘I brought half a crown in case you had no money with you, Julia.’ He handed it to Jimmy. ‘Bread,’ he said. ‘And milk, especially for Rosie. No gin this morning.’

  Jimmy grinned; Nat’s eyes were fixed on the coin.

  ‘We’ll be back this afternoon,’ I said. I picked up the gloves, wrapped them in the clean cloth, and turned for the half-window and the rickety plank.

  The smell of the street was almost sweet after the fetid darkness of the tiny room. The crowd which had followed us had dispersed. James and I exchanged one look and then set off down the mire of the lane to where his phaeton and’ groom and horses were waiting at the fish market.

  ‘Where first?’ James asked as he helped me into my seat and his groom swung up behind us. ? good lodging-house, or Mrs Williams’s hat-and-glove shop?’

  ‘Lodgings first,’ I said. ‘I’d like it to be somewhere near here, so it is not too strange for them.’

  ‘We passed a little inn on this road,’ James said. ‘It looked all right, and it should only be for a few nights.’

  He turned the phaeton in a sharp curve and drove us back to it.

  ‘Will you hold the reins while I ask if they have rooms?’ he said, and he passed the reins to me and went inside.

  The sun came out, and it was warm on the box of the phaeton. I looked down at my gloved hands. They were trembling. I was trembling with anger. I was angry at the poverty of that miserable room and at the knowledge that there were rooms like that in every house down that filthy lane, and many and many filthy lanes in this pretty city. I was angry that every exquisite shawl, every embroidered glove had been made by young girls losing their eyesight bent over their work in dirty rooms.

  James came out smiling. ‘That’s done,’ he said; but then he paused at the black expression on my face. ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘You look like a thundercloud.’

  ‘It’s the children,’ I said. ‘Acre’s children. I am so angry at how they have been treated that I can scarcely speak.’

  James nodded. ‘If you had not recognized Jimmy Dart, he would have been a linkboy all his life, unless someone bigger than him fought him for his torch. And that poor little foursome would have been there for ever.’ He paused. ‘Just as well for them that you have the sight,’ he said, and clicked to the horses and we moved off.

  Mrs Williams’s shop was in Milsom Street. James pulled up outside the elegant facade with the white and gold swinging sign and waited for me to dismount from the carriage.

  ‘You’re coming in to speak to her?’ I asked.

  ‘I thought you would do it,’ he said. I could see some private smile behind his eyes, but his face was serious.

  I remembered Airs Williams from when Mama and I had been in her shop. She was an imposing woman, tall, with iron-grey hair and a sharp hard face. When we had decided not to buy her gloves, she had raised one eyebrow as if at some private derogatory thought, and gestured to the serving lady to pack the boxes away. There was always a lady customer or two in the shop taking tea or coffee; there was always a lady in the fitting rooms with a couple of sempstresses taking measurements. And there was a light muslin curtain across the doorway to the workshop at the back where the girls would stop talking and listen when a customer came in.

  My heart sank. ‘Please do it, James,’ I said. ‘I’ll come in with you, but I cannot speak to her. I could not stand it if she made a scene.’

  ‘All right,’ he said equably and nodded to his groom to go to the horses’ heads.

  The silver bell over the door tinkled as we went in, and one of the serving ladies came forward with a shallow smile which widened when she recognized James.

  ‘Mr Fortescue!’ she exclaimed. ‘How delightful! And Miss…Miss Lacey! I shall call Mrs Williams; she would want to serve you herself.’ She twitched back the muslin curtain to the workshop and called sharply to one of the girls. ‘Clarinda! Fetch Mrs Williams, please. Tell her that Mr Fortescue and Miss Lacey are here.’

  She left the curtain open and I knew the sewing girls were all staring at me. I had o