‘They say he’s got a mountain of debts already, and he’s looking for a rich widow to marry.’
Was that intended as a warning to me? If so, Amos was a long way off the mark for once. He was usually a totally reliable source of gossip. His success in adapting to life in London astounded me. A year ago, he’d never set foot outside his home county of Herefordshire, far away to the west, and he still spoke with an accent that carried hayfields and apple orchards in every syllable. He’d been caught in the same hurricane that had blown me into the life I was leading. When Rancie and I came to London he’d talked about staying a day or two to see us settled. Days had turned to weeks, weeks to months, and here he still was. With his strength and knowledge of horses, it was no surprise when he found work at a livery stables on the Bayswater Road, the northern edge of Hyde Park. He even solved for me the problem of how I was to keep Rancie (or Esperance, to give her her proper name), my father’s last gift to me. She was given board and lodging at the livery stables, in return for being ridden by some of the more skilful and light-handed lady clients. What was surprising was the extent to which this country giant, standing some six and a half feet in his riding boots, had become a source of knowledge about fashionable London life, all without the slightest hint of snobbery, more the way a boy might study the habits of birds or animals.
At first I wondered how he came by this gossip; then one day when I happened to be crossing the park on foot I saw him, though he didn’t see me. He was riding out behind a well-dressed and beautiful lady. His boots and the cob he was riding shone like mahogany, he wore a black hat with a silver lace cockade on his light brown hair and his blue eyes gleamed with good humour. I saw the glances he was getting from riders with less impressive grooms and the complacent smile on the face of his own lady, and could hardly keep from laughing out loud. I’d heard since that he was so popular with lady customers that his stables had to increase his wages to stop him being poached by rivals.
We turned into South Audley Street, nearly home. It was almost full light now.
‘I’ll come for you on Monday then, shall I?’ Amos said.
‘Yes please.’
Most mornings of the week I rode out on Rancie with Amos. Even on days when I didn’t see them, the thought of them less than a mile away across the park was enough to raise my spirits.
He rode in front of me into Adam’s Mews, then through the opening into a kind of appendix to the mews called Abel Yard. At the mounting block by the open gates he slid off Bishop to help me down, then, taking Rancie’s reins, vaulted back into his saddle. He touched his crop to his hat brim as they rode away, Rancie letting herself be led as quietly as a children’s pony.
There was a cow on our doorstep, a Guernsey, being milked into a quart jug.
‘Hello, Martha. Hello, Mr Colley,’ I said.
The cowman looked up from Martha’s stomach and grinned a hello at me, baring a set of toothless gums. He and Martha, along with his three other Guernsey cows, a dozen chickens and one cockerel, inhabited the end of the cul-de-sac that was Abel Yard. Mr Colley, his wife, daughter, daughter’s baby and daughter’s bone-idle husband lived above the cow barn. If I woke early enough, I could look out of the window and see Mr Colley leading his first cow of the day out by lamplight on the start of his milk round. He sometimes took the cows to graze on the long grass of the burying ground behind Grosvenor Chapel round the corner near the workhouse. The authorities tried to stop him and it was a frequent sight to see Mr Colley sprinting along the mews, a cow trotting beside him and the parish beadle uttering threats as he puffed along behind.
The other business in Abel Yard was a carriage mender’s. The owner, Mr Grindley, made a reasonable living repairing the springs and other metal parts of carriages in his workshop, which took up two brick-built coach houses on either side of the entrance, with living quarters above. Our two rooms were over the one on the right-hand side as you came in.
Mrs Martley was standing inside our door, watching to see that Mr Colley was giving good measure. She wore a white cotton apron over her usual dress of navy-blue wool, her faded brown and grey hair firmly pinned under a starched white cap, her face reddened from stirring saucepans over the fire. My riding habit made her frown. She didn’t approve of my morning rides, or very much about me at all for that matter, but I was the one who paid the rent, so she couldn’t do anything about it. Until quite recently, Mrs Martley had been earning her blameless living as a midwife; then that same hurricane had picked her up and plumped her down beside me like a ruffled hen. With the help of my father’s and my dear friend, Daniel Suter, I’d rescued her from kidnap and imprisonment and was now saddled with her, like the man in the fable who saves somebody from drowning and has to support him for the rest of his life.
It was Daniel Suter who had looked after us when I was too dazed to do anything. I strongly suspected that it was Daniel, too, who’d found some money for me. Soon after Mrs Martley and I moved in to Abel Yard a messenger delivered a banker’s order for fifty pounds, made out to Miss Liberty Lane; he wouldn’t say who’d sent it. It was a large amount, as much as a labourer might earn in a year. As a hard-working musician and composer, Daniel could never have spared such a sum himself, but he might have got up a collection among my father’s friends. He’d denied any knowledge of it and put on a good show of being puzzled, but I couldn’t think of any other possible source.
When Daniel told me he’d heard of a place that might do for Mrs Martley and me near Hyde Park, I’d wondered how we could possibly afford such an expensive neighbourhood. I had forgotten that expensive neighbourhoods must have people and animals to support them: grooms and horses, sweeps and grocers, chickens to lay their eggs, terriers to kill their rats, and men to cart away their rubbish. So while the great houses showed their fine fronts to the park, a whole community of us lived in the mews and streets behind, like birds and squirrels in mighty oak trees. Four shillings a week bought us the use of a parlour with its own fireplace and an attic bedroom. It was no more than a temporary refuge, for the landlord had other plans; but since everything else in my life seemed to be temporary, that was the least of my worries.
Mr Colley squeezed out the last creamy drops from Martha’s udder and Mrs Martley bent with a sigh to pick up the jug. Maybe I should have offered to carry it upstairs for her, but I didn’t want to spoil my only good pair of black gloves. I went ahead up the stairs and opened the door to the parlour.
‘There’s a letter come for you,’ she said. ‘It’s a foreign one.’
My heart bounded. The only person likely to be writing to me from abroad was my brother Tom – or Thomas Fraternity Lane, to give him his full name. He was two years my junior and, since our father’s death, my only close relation. It was the grief of my life that we hadn’t seen each other for four years and weren’t likely to do so until we were old. Since my father could provide no fortune or proper profession for him, Tom was sent away to India when he was sixteen years old to work for the East India Company.
The letter was lying on the table, I picked it up and thought I caught a whiff of salt from its long sea voyage, and an even fainter one of spices.
‘It came yesterday,’ Mrs Martley said, ‘only the boy delivered it to the coach house by mistake.’
By then I was halfway up the stairs. A letter from Tom was precious and I wanted to gloat over it on my own. I pushed aside the curtain that divided my share of the attic room from Mrs Martley’s and sat down on my narrow bed by the window to read.
The first part of it was entirely satisfactory. He was still, like me, trying to recover from the shock of our father’s murder, but life in Bombay was a wonderful distraction. He was working hard, learning the language, living in a fine house with three other
