‘Why yes, because I knew you would be
pleased for me. Some ladies would not be as happy for me as I know you will be.’
Theirs was a strange friendship; one, born a lady, wrenched from her homeland on her husband’s decision. The other, from the most wretched of backgrounds, torn from it on the decision of the law. They had an affinity born originally of loneliness and the need of another woman to talk to, which they had recognized years before as they waited for their children outside school.
But theirs was a secret friendship. Lucinda Boyle knew that should her husband find out, he would immediately ban her from calling on Meg. Today was the first time she had dared to visit whilst the Captain was at home and not at sea.
Meg smiled and sat beside her. ‘So what have you to tell me, Mrs Boyle?’ She was always formal. She could never bring herself to call her friend, who was undoubtedly a proper lady, by her first name.
Lucinda took hold of her hand. ‘I’m going home,’ she said softly. ‘I’m going home – to England.’
Meg squeezed her hand. ‘Oh, I’m so glad.’ Sudden tears wet her eyes. ‘Oh, so glad for you! But I’ll miss you.’
Lucinda nodded. ‘I shall miss you too, Meg. I heard’, she said, ‘that Ralph was travelling to England too. Phoebe heard it from some of her friends.’
‘Did she tell you why?’ Meg asked softly. ‘Do you know why he’s going?’
‘To see his aunt? Your husband’s sister?’
Meg shook her head. ‘No, that’s not ’real reason, though he’ll visit Emily and her family whilst he’s there. He doesn’t remember her of course, he was very young when she went home.’ She looked pensively into the middle distance for a moment, then got to her feet. ‘But I’m forgetting myself. You must be parched. I’ll get us some tea.’
‘In a moment.’ Lucinda stayed her. ‘Tell me why he’s going. You’re upset, Meg. Don’t you want him to go?’
‘I’m afraid he won’t come back,’ Meg said in a low voice. ‘I’m afraid of what he’ll find when he gets back to his roots.’
‘I don’t understand,’ she questioned. ‘To his roots?’
‘I mean that he’s going to search for his real family, if he has one.’ Meg turned to her friend. ‘I have never told anyone this before, but I know that I can trust you. Ralph is not my son. His mother died on board ship when we were being transported. I didn’t give birth to him.’ She gave a small involuntary sob. ‘He is my son,’ she said fiercely. ‘But now he needs to find out about his real mother, the women who gave birth to him.’
‘And no-one else knows?’ Lucinda asked softly.
‘Only Ralph Clavell and two others, and,’ she added bitterly, ‘Captain Boyle has always suspected.’
‘But it doesn’t matter any more, surely?’ Lucinda asked. ‘Ralph is an adult.’
‘No, it doesn’t matter to anyone but me,’ Meg whispered. ‘But it proves that I’ve been acting a lie all of these years and now I’ve been found out.’ She lowered her head. ‘I’ve tried so hard to change my life. To prove that I’m as good as anyone else. But I’m not.’
‘But you are! There is no-one perfect. Not a single one of us. If you knew the thoughts I had sometimes, you would know that I am a very wicked lady!’
Meg gave a shaky laugh. ‘I do know one perfect lady,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘Joe’s sister. She always was an angel even though terrible things happened to her.’
‘I’d like to meet this perfect lady.’ Lucinda smiled. ‘For I don’t believe in her!’
Meg gave a gasp. ‘Would you? Oh would you, Mrs Boyle? Would you see her and take a message from us? I know that Ralph will visit but he might forget what I want him to say.’
‘Of course I will,’ Lucinda assured her. ‘I would be delighted to.’
Meg grew thoughtful and hesitated before saying, ‘But no, I couldn’t ask you. It would be too difficult for you. Captain Boyle wouldn’t like it if you visited Emily. She was once a convict.’
‘Captain Boyle is not coming with me,’ Lucinda assured her, ‘and I shall tell him only what I want him to know.’ Her lips turned down. ‘My husband has his secrets, or he thinks he
has,’ she added. ‘I have a reason for asking about your son, Meg. Can you tell me when he will be travelling and on which ship? You see, Phoebe and I will be travelling without an escort and I would be grateful for some help on the voyage.’
‘He’d be glad to help, I’m sure of it. I’ll find out ’details.’
‘One other thing, Meg.’ Lucinda Boyle’s expression was anxious. ‘I rather think that your son Ralph is fond of Phoebe. What do you think of that?’
‘
DEAREST MAMA AND
Papa,’ Amelia wrote. ‘I can’t think how I came to be involved in one of Aunt Anna’s mad schemes. She wants me to be a schoolteacher! I have insisted that I would be no good at all as I haven’t the patience, but she is so persuasive and persistent, rather like you are, Papa, and I am to meet the Misses Fielding tomorrow.
‘They cannot afford any help apparently, they are on their “uppers”, as Aunt Anna says, and lead very frugal lives. I suppose I can stay for a couple of weeks, but I shall insist on being home for Christmas.
‘From your ever loving daughter,
Amelia.’
The house in which the Misses Fielding lived and taught was tucked away in Back Swinegate, a narrow lane off St Sampson’s Square, the busy market area which was lined with old inns, shops and houses. Amelia and her aunt were welcomed
at the door by Miss Harriet, whilst Miss Fielding, the elder of the two sisters, was making tea.
‘We have a girl comes in to help each morning,’ Harriet explained as she ushered them into the parlour, a cosy, crowded room with a piano, a desk, table and sideboard, shabby chairs and a bright cheerful fire burning in the grate. ‘But otherwise we manage very well on our own,’ she added. ‘Of course we have always had to, since we were very young.’
‘Have you no living parents, Miss Harriet?’ Amelia asked boldly. Harriet Fielding was perhaps five or six years older than herself and as her sister Elizabeth came into the room carrying a tea tray, she saw that she was in her early thirties.
Introductions were made again and Miss Fielding poured the tea and handed round a plate of dainty cakes. Amelia took one for she guessed that they had been baked especially for their visit. They chatted politely for a while and then Harriet answered Amelia’s previous question.
‘Our parents died when we were very young, Miss Linton,’ she said. ‘I don’t remember my father at all and my mother only slightly. But you remember her, don’t you Elizabeth?’
‘I do.’ She inclined her head. Like her sister she was fair with blue eyes and a slight, fragile frame. Perhaps they don’t eat enough, Amelia thought as she sipped her tea and observed them.
‘Our father died when Harriet was a baby and I was about four. Our mother died when I was eight.’ She glanced at her sister. ‘We have looked after each other since then.’
But who else took care of them, Amelia pondered, and how sad, having no other family; she thought of her own boisterous, happy family, but asked no more questions, it didn’t seem fair to pry into such a sensitive issue.
‘As we have only a small inheritance, we have to make our own living, so we decided to open a school,’ Harriet explained. ‘Elizabeth is very clever, she takes after our father. He was a schoolmaster and ran his own school.’
‘Mother was clever too,’ Elizabeth broke in. ‘She had her own confectionery shop after Father died and was very successful.’ Her face suddenly took on a frozen look and her lips tightened. ‘Would you care for more tea, Mrs Gregory? Miss Linton?’
Amelia was shown the schoolroom, which was across the tiny hall from the parlour. It was not a large room and was divided by a curtain. ‘As you see, Miss Linton,’ said Miss Fielding, ‘we do not have a great deal of room but we manage to take eight pupils. Two of them are fee-paying, which pays the rent, and the other pupils are paid for out of the generosity of benefactors such as Mrs Gregory.’
‘But if you have just the one room, Miss Fielding, will it not be rather crowded with another teacher?’
‘We need three more pupils to make the school pay its way, Miss Linton,’ she replied. ‘Harriet suggested that we could use the parlour for older pupils if we had another teacher, and we could also give piano lessons in there.’ She hesitated. ‘We cannot afford to pay very much, Miss Linton, perhaps expenses and a small salary.’
Amelia glanced at her aunt who raised her eyebrows and gave an imperceptible nod of her head.
‘I realize that there are few teachers who can afford to take such a position as this. Young women who teach for a living are generally quite poor, but I understand that earning your own living is not your prime consideration?’
‘No, it isn’t,’ Amelia said slowly, wondering what tale her aunt had spun. ‘I haven’t taught before and I’m not sure that I would be a very good teacher.’
‘Well we could try each other out! If you could take the new pupils,’ Harriet said eagerly. ‘Read to them, teach them to write and add up simple numbers? Nothing too difficult!’
‘I suppose so,’ she said reluctantly. ‘Perhaps for a week or two until you find someone more suitable. I did tell Mama I would be home to help with Christmas.’
The two Misses Fielding looked wistful. ‘You’re from a large family, Miss Linton?’ Harriet asked. ‘I suppose it is always very merry?’
‘Yes indeed.’ Amelia felt almost ashamed to
admit it. ‘I have two brothers and three sisters, my parents of course and other relatives who live near. We are always a houseful.’
‘Then of course you must go home,’ Miss Fielding said softly. ‘You mustn’t worry about us.’
Amelia pondered as they drove home. ‘Aunt Anna,’ she said, ‘how did that happen? I had no intention of agreeing. And I did not wish to be paid a salary!’
Her aunt smiled. ‘They would not have wanted you to work for nothing. They have their pride. I had told them that you wished to try out your independence, that you were a young woman with modern ideas! That’s right isn’t it? And your inherent good nature took over when you discovered that they could not afford anyone else. But you will find that not only are you giving something to those dear sisters and their pupils, but will gain great satisfaction for yourself in doing so.’
I hope she’s right, Amelia thought the next morning as she prepared herself. She dressed in a plain gown and fastened her thick hair into a coil in the nape of her neck. But I am determined that I will not be persuaded to stay for longer than I said.
‘What time do we go, Aunt?’ she asked as they finished an early breakfast. ‘I forgot to ask.’
‘The pupils arrive at nine,’ her aunt replied. ‘But I am not coming. I have other business to
attend to. Patrick will take you as near to St Sampson’s Square as he can get and then come back for me as I need the carriage this morning. You can find your own way from there, can you not?’
Amelia looked at her blankly. She could hardly take her maid Nancy to accompany her, what would she do all day? She swallowed. She had wanted freedom and now it seemed that she was about to get it.
‘Look for the Roman bathhouse, dear,’ her aunt advised, ‘then Finkle Street and Back Swinegate is just behind. It’s quite easy to find.’
So unused to travelling alone, Amelia immediately became lost within the alleyways and lanes surrounding the market; but to her delight, rather than feeling perturbed at being alone for the first time in a strange place, she actually revelled in it. She dawdled her way past the shops, but hurried past the taverns and through the alleyways, though they were so thronged with hurrying people she didn’t feel nervous, and quite by chance, rather than design, she found herself outside the door of the Misses Fieldings’ house.
She could hear chanting coming from inside the door as she knocked with the shiny brass knocker, and realized that the pupils were learning their numbers tables by rote. She smiled to herself as she remembered doing the same thing with her governess at home in Holderness.
‘Oh, Miss Linton,’ Miss Harriet greeted her. ‘We had quite given you up and thought you had changed your mind about coming.’
‘I’m so sorry I’m late,’ Amelia began guiltily. ‘I’m afraid I got lost.’
‘It doesn’t matter in the least,’ Miss Harriet assured her. ‘Just so long as you are here now. It’s very easy to become lost within York if you don’t know it. But it won’t take you long to find your way around.’
The day passed quickly. She was introduced to the children, a mixed class of three boys and five girls. Two of the girls were the fee-paying pupils and Amelia sat with them and Miss Harriet behind the curtain and listened to them read, and then gave them a subject for a story which she asked them to write in their own words and which she would comment on the next day. Then she sat with Miss Fielding whilst she taught the remaining children simple arithmetic.
She watched the children as they chanted. Apart from the fee-paying pupils they were poorly dressed and two of them, a boy and a girl, were in very thin clothes and not wearing shoes, even though the day was cold. The little girl kept curling and uncurling her toes and Amelia resolved to ask Ginny if she had kept any of Lily’s old shoes or if she had already given them away to the village children. Rarely was anything wasted in the Linton family. Their mother said she remembered well enough about
hard times and so any spare clothing, blankets or shoes were given to the poor.
Amelia beckoned to the girl when the lesson was finished and Miss Fielding had gone out of the room for a moment. ‘What is your name?’ she asked.
‘Moira, miss.’ She had pale gingery-coloured hair which looked as if it hadn’t ever been brushed.
‘And how old are you, Moira?’
‘I’m nine, miss. Ten in two weeks.’
‘I’m ten already.’ The barefoot boy spoke up. His hair was very dark and he had deep blue eyes. ‘Nearly eleven. And our Eamon is only seven so he can’t come to school yet, but when he does I shall leave.’
Both children had strong Irish accents and both had pinched looks about their faces.
‘Are you brother and sister?’ Amelia asked.
They nodded. ‘This is Kieran,’ Moira piped up. ‘He doesn’t like coming to school, but Ma says he has to. We have to learn to read and write so that we can get work.’