words, I said nothing until I couldn’t help but speak. The room was in such darkness that for a moment I wasn’t sure what tricks the light played: for seated behind the minister was a shrivelled-up woman dressed in the dustiest of clothes.
‘Who is that?’ I asked.
The minister turned and seemed shocked to see her there. ‘That,’ he replied unsteadily, ‘is my wife.’
‘Then, sir,’ I said, ‘I am afraid she is dead.’
The remark was greeted with laughter, not from the minister or my father or his pissed acquaintance but from the folds of a curtain. A young gentleman, also wearing a mask, stepped out into the light and stood beside me.
‘Of course she’s dead,’ he said, his words slurred. ‘Marriage is murder.’
Whether or not the minister heard I wasn’t sure, but much to my father’s fury it made me giggle. Everyone was drunk except me and the minister, and I wasn’t sure how sober he was. Surely, I thought, a wedding this soaked in liquor could never be considered binding.
The minister raised his eyes to the high ceiling as if hoping to find a god to calm him and said, ‘My wife has been shown to me this night. It is a sign to remind the living of the passion to be found in life and the brief amount of light there is before everlasting darkness.’
‘On with the thing, sir!’ shouted my father.
‘This is no time for ghosts,’ said his brocaded friend.
The minister, somewhat shaken, went on, though every now and again he glanced uneasily behind him to where his dead wife sat watching.
The wedding service consisted of nothing more than the young gentleman and myself giving our consents and signing the papers that the black spider eagerly put before us.
And that was that. I never saw my bridegroom’s face, nor was I informed of his name, nor the purpose of such a hasty marriage. Cook told me the next day that my husband had gone to join the navy and I need think no more about it.
‘With luck,’ she said, ‘you will be a respectable widow by the time you’re fifteen.’
I mention these three events only because by the time the years had chased the child in me away I saw all too clearly how the upturned cart of my life was settled. I was destined to live out my days emptying my father’s chamber pot and serving him his meals. This may well have been my fate, but it was at this very low juncture that the tide changed in my favour.
My father was to remarry.
When I heard the news that I was to have a stepmother I was completely flummoxed. I could only assume that this lady, whoever she was, must be wealthy and my father had tricked her into believing she was marrying a respectable merchant. There seemed no other explanation for her acceptance of such a foolish proposal.
By this time, I was sixteen and had by degrees taught myself to read from cookbooks, discarded newspapers and the salacious pamphlets that Captain Truegood regularly purchased. It was in one of the newspapers that I had first come across advertisements by gentlemen for wives and occasionally by women in want of a husband. I made up one I thought my father might have written if he had resorted to writing to the paper in search of a wife. I read it out to Cook and it tickled her fancy no end.
An Invitation To The Ladies.
A captain who left the Navy to become a merchant finds himself shipwrecked on dry land with a wet whistle that can never be satisfied. Losses and crosses have reduced his fortune to no more than his wardrobe, a diamond ring, a gold watch and an amber-headed cane. In addition to the above he has a flaxen full-bottom, flea-ridden wig befitting a man of his age and position. I plead to the generous ladies of the cities of London and Westminster: SAVE ME. Letters to be sent to Truegood, Milk Street at Cheapside.
Cook told me only three days before the wedding that my stepmother-to-be had two daughters of about my age. That went some way to explain her decision to marry. Perhaps she wasn’t wealthy after all and was in search of respectability. Between you and me and a four-poster bed, there was little to nothing to recommend my father.
On the day of Captain Truegood’s nuptials he, was surprisingly sober and dressed in his flaxen full-bottom wig and his best suit of clothes. He stood in the hall clutching his amber-top cane, tapping it on the barometer and bellowing as if there was a house full of servants, not just Cook and myself.
‘Everything is to be shipshape,’ he roared. ‘I am off to be married.’
No one replied, only the front door groaned as it was closed.
There was a wonderful peace to our house, as there always was the moment the captain left. I could almost hear the walls let out a sigh and settle back to relish their bricks, bones and plaster conversations. It was at these moments that the house became bearable; the quiet peace of it, the enticing smell of fresh bread wafting from the kitchen. I thought I would have the best part of the morning to enjoy the silence before Captain and the new Mrs Truegood returned.
‘Do you think…’ I asked Cook. She had just taken a batch of fresh-baked rolls from the oven and I was putting them on a wire rack to cool. They smelled so good that my mouth watered and I slipped one surreptitiously into my apron.
‘I saw that, miss. Now put it back.’
Reluctantly I did as I was told and she huffed.
‘Do you think – ’
‘I try hard not to,’ interrupted Cook, stuffing a fowl.
‘Do you think that my father will tell my stepmother that she has a stepdaughter?’
Cook was never a great conversationalist and my question was greeted by a grunt, which I took to mean ‘no’.
I sighed. I had asked as I was certain that it would come as something of a shock to my father’s new wife for I doubted that he had told her of my existence. The reason, I supposed, was that he had so long persisted in treating me as a servant that he must have felt it to be the truth. Quite why he saw me in this unfavourable light I have never fathomed. I didn’t think for a moment that my stepmother’s discovery that I had sprung from Captain Truegood’s loins would go in my favour.
‘Do you think I will be asked to leave?’
‘Leave where?’
‘Leave here.’
‘What? You buffle head, of course not. What would you do?’
‘Be my own mistress,’ I said, ‘for I am determined not to be beholden to a man – especially one like Mr Truegood.’
‘I have no time to listen to this stuff and nonsense.’ Cook softened. She took one of the rolls and handed it to me. ‘Help yourself to butter then go and see if the canaries are still alive. I’ll call you if I need you. And try to bring some reason into that muddled head of yours.’
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