Page 5

Chapter Five

T here’s another thing that I’ve not mentioned yet, on account of me being embarrassed about it, but I suppose now is as good a time as any. Joan and me were as bad as each other for it, but we both had our own little secrets, a bit like Da’s stash. Joan’s secret was a scrapbook, full of curiosities. A picture of the Palace of Versailles and a sample of smuggled white lace. Pressed flowers. Sea shells. Paper cuttings. Tucked into a pocket at the back of this scrapbook were sketches of men’s breeches with bulging crotches. She must have sketched them herself, although I never asked, for then she would have known I’d gone peeking; and it was very bold of her to have sketched such vulgar things, considering what Da might have done, had he found it. But she must have been curious about men, mighty curious.

My stash was simpler and consisted of two things. One was a tin with coins in it – coins I had saved up over the years. Tips from the fishmongers for saving them the best of the catch, or coins I had been tossed by a tea man for luck. But it was not a huge savings pot, only a few pennies. The other item in my stash was a map of the British Isles, which I folded and unfolded time and again, so much that its creases were worn thin. I’d got the map from the general-goods store at the Mussel Inn. And on that map was one place that sung to me as a mermaid might sing to a sailor: London Town.

I could trace the route of the Great North Road to London with my finger. Past York, Selby and Doncaster, then Grantham, Stamford and Stilton. Or another, longer route that meandered through the west of the country, through the towns of the Scottish Borders and Carlisle, Penrith, Leeds and Sheffield. And then I was there. For although I was a girl of creels and mussel beds, gulls and gannets and beached whales, I craved the metropolitan things I had heard about from the tea men. The Season. Musical theatres. Pleasure gardens. Events that needed admission tickets, plus a handsome chaperone and a dash of rouge.

My destiny was laid out before me, you see, like a fisherman’s line. I was a fishergirl, becoming a fishwife like Ma, and soon a fisher lad would propose and I would be a proper wife to him. I would wear a striped skirt and apron every day except Sundays. I would toil when my husband was ashore, looking after him, and I would toil when he was on the Forth, repairing and baiting up his lines. I already knew how to gut and dress cod, halibut and flatfish, singing all the while as my fingers got redder and colder and sliced with cuts. Singing the same songs my grannies had sung, of good winds bringing the men home; although my voice might not be as high and sweet as Joan’s, I still enjoyed those songs. If I had a babe, whether it lived or died, I would be back at the market within the week, calling ‘Fresh fish’ into the harbour wind. I would never leave tiny Fisherrow, and I would never go to London or see a play or walk in a garden of showy blooms, or let a gent kiss me hello in the foyer of a theatre. One day I would realize that I needed to hide my roughened hands with a pair of soft suede gloves, if I was ever to be seen in kirk.

Finally Spencer returned, a month or so later on a Sunday evening as it was darkening. He arrived much as he’d done the first time he came to our cottage, merry and cold, smelling of pipe tobacco and sharp peppermint and a spiced cologne. The nights had got shorter and our cottage had got even darker and gloomier, with a bigger pile of logs now hissing and crackling in the fire. But when I opened the door and saw him standing there, I shivered – not with cold, but with excitement. Here he was. Something different from my ordinary life. And even handsomer than I had remembered.

Ma had been at her darning, stockings in a creel at her feet, shooing Little Paws away from the wool, and Da was out for a Sunday pint, which he liked after his Sunday lunch.

‘You’ve just missed Mr Dickson,’ said Ma as I brought Spencer into the room. ‘But you’ll find him down at the Mussel Inn.’

‘Ah, that is good luck, for the Mussel Inn is where I am staying,’ Spencer replied, ‘but never mind, I have only come for my parcel.’ He gave a pause then and looked at us all expectantly, which obliged Ma to be hospitable by offering him a mug of tea. He nodded heartily and sat in Da’s chair, looking comfy as you like. Joan had been set to washing the pots, but she cut that task short to pour Spencer’s tea, so we all sat round the fire as he sipped. Joan played with her hair, which hung in two messy plaits, and I guessed she wished she’d had the time to brush it through. Mine gleamed. My hands were soft. My gown was pristine.

The pots will be half cleaned and I’ll have to do them later, I thought. And after watching Joan preen for a bit, Spencer looked towards me.

‘Are you girls not with husbands yet?’ he asked. He asked it gently but it was as direct a question as we had ever been asked in our lives.

We both blushed bright pink. Ma stiffened.

‘I still need my girls around the house for a bit, helping me with the bait-collecting and the chores,’ she said. In truth, she only needed one of us – that is, me, as Joan was lazy and far too mollycoddled. She sniffed and looked uncomfortable. But Spencer was breezy.

‘You should see what girls like you pair can earn in London,’ he went on. I was all ears now. ‘Working in big shops and selling buttons and hats and bodices to the ladies. Or making tassels, or painting fans in the nice little workshops they have set up there. Why, the earnings for girls like you are ten pounds a year, so I’m told.’ He sipped his tea. Politely, with not a hint of a slurp or a sigh.

Ma stiffened again and reddened too, for I don’t think we had ever heard the word ‘bodices’ uttered by a man, and certainly not by a stranger.

But I spoke up. I could not help myself. ‘And how do they get such jobs?’

‘Apprenticeships,’ Spencer replied confidently. ‘Same as fishing. Same as that mill up the road. Fishergirls like you would get a job anywhere, with your handiwork skills. But you’ve got to know the right people, of course.’

‘I should never like to work as an apprentice,’ said Joan. ‘It would be hard work from dawn ’til dusk.’

‘You should never like to work as anything,’ I retorted.

‘But I would like to have a nice trunk of fans and buttons. And bodices,’ Joan added slyly, not meeting Ma’s eye.

‘That’s enough talk of undergarments,’ Ma said.

I could have died on the spot. But Spencer was a man who had heard far dirtier talk than a girl yearning for a cotton bodice, and thankfully the comment bounced off him.

‘Is it true what they say about London?’ I asked. ‘That it grows bigger and bigger by the day?’

He nodded, fiddling with his mug and crossing one leg over the other, then settling into a story. ‘Every time I go back there, something has changed,’ he said. ‘Something new has been built or opened. There are great brick town houses five storeys high. The Thames is crowded with ships’ masts and sails and rowing boats. We are no longer England and Scotland, two separate nations, now. We are truly Great Britain, with London as our beating heart. There is a fortune to be made there, which is why I have returned for my package. I trust you have kept it safe.’

‘We have, sir,’ says Joan. ‘Shall I fetch it?’

‘There’s a good girl, Joan,’ commented Ma, for she was always praising Joan for trifles and never praised me for anything.

Joan bustled around fetching the package. Ma tidied away her darning. Spencer caught my eye and smiled. I could have died on the spot again. Joan gave the package to Spencer, who stood up and gave more money to Ma.

‘I shall be off then,’ he said, brushing his fingers through his unruly hair. ‘But I shall be down the Mussel Inn for the next two days, having meetings with a couple of my acquaintances about a thing or two before I head back down south, should Mr Dickson fancy joining me for an ale.’ He said this to Ma, but he glanced at me as he said it. He wanted me to know where he would be – I knew it. He was giving me his whereabouts on the off-chance I might want to skip out and meet him for an ale, or a walk or a talk. Mibbie find out more about the fortunes that can be made by girls in London Town. Or mibbie even get to know him better.

I skipped out first thing the next day, when Joan was still in bed and Da was off on the boat, so no chance of him going to meet Spencer – not that I thought he ever would, for Ma had said, ‘He’s a fast one’ as soon as Spencer had left, and the door was locked behind him.

‘What do you think was in that package?’ I’d overheard Joan ask our ma that night.

‘Well, I never speculate, Joan,’ Ma had replied, a tone of pride in her voice, for Ma and Da’s lack of curiosity about the things that came and went from our house was the entire reason they had such a trusted job in keeping things safe.

‘The parcel had a peculiar scent to it,’ said Joan, ‘a scent I could not place. And it seemed overly small for the big, enormous fuss he was making about it.’

‘Well, now it’s gone – back with Spencer, where it belongs – and we have more important things to worry about than packages,’ said Ma. ‘For these lines are not even half finished yet. Maggie, you’ll need to get on to them soon as you can, for if they are unfinished, it will be the workhouse at Eskmills for the lot of us.’

However, I had more important things to worry about than fishing lines. So off I trotted on my usual errand of buying the day’s groceries at the market on the harbour. But instead of dawdling and gawping at the milliner’s stall and the draper’s stand, I dawdled at the Mussel Inn. I made sure to do this before I bought my groceries, for there would have been nothing less alluring that me hanging around with a turnip and a cabbage in my creel.

The Mussel Inn was a big, bustling building on the waterfront where travelling folk would spend the night, and where most of the business of the burgh was conducted. The fishermen, like Da, drank in the back bar, and strangers were not welcomed there. The building had an open courtyard in the middle, with two storeys of galleries around it, with rooms off them, including a big assembly room and a couple of parlours, and smaller meeting rooms and the like. It also had a stable and storage sheds, and even an adjoining bakery and a general-goods store and a barber shop, so there was always a toing and froing of folk.

I decided to linger around the general-goods store, which sold a miscellany of pots and pans and pegs and cheap prints, pamphlets and ballads. I must say at this point I did not know exactly what I wanted to happen, should I bump into Spencer. All I knew was that I was feeling the sense of something new and different. I suppose, if there was a word for it, that word would be ‘possibility’.

Mibbie Spencer sensed me too, for I was only in the general store five minutes when he sauntered through the door, whistling a jaunty song, which I now know to be a bawdy one about a lusty lady and a tradesman. I stiffened, a cake of Castile soap in my hand. He raised his eyebrows when he saw me and tipped his hat, giving a small bow.

‘Well, aren’t you a welcome sight this morning, Maggie Dickson?’ he said. ‘But I’ve had a sleepless night, sharing a room with a sailor who has not washed in a month, and I could do with a cup of strong coffee. What say you join me?’

My heart raced at that, for, apart from Da, I had never heard a man talk about his bed or washing, or strong cups of anything. I frowned, wondering if Spencer was too fast for me, and if it all got back to Da that I was seen with him, I would be whipped and sent to bed.

‘Please don’t fret,’ he went on. ‘I’m a respectable gent. We can take a table in the good front parlour and look out at the boats and be served the finest coffee in a silver pot.’

‘Just quickly then,’ I replied, and he took the Castile soap from my hand and put it down on the shelf. His fingernails were clean and shiny as pink buttons and I felt self-conscious of my own: short and weak from salt-water. But he paid no heed to them and nodded, instead, at the soap. ‘Cheap and oily,’ he declared of the pile of creamy white squares. ‘And no scent at all. Now I will tell you about the scents and fine fragrances in London, and I may even have a scent for you to try, if you like.’

Well, that got my attention. I followed him out of the store and back into the courtyard, noticing how his greatcoat hung so well from his shoulders. In his wake, I smoothed my braids and wiped my nose and mouth. Then we climbed up the stairs to the parlour at the front, which was the nicer of the two upstairs rooms and was hung with red curtains and had polished wooden floors and sturdy tables laid for dining. He sat me down in a velvet-upholstered chair by the window and went off to find a serving girl, and I took in the view. It is not often that I saw my own town from a second-storey window, for there was no reason for us ever to come and take coffee or tea, or anything, from the Mussel Inn. Except for Da, of course, but thankfully his boat was amongst those bobbing out in the bay.

Fisherrow Harbour stretched before me, its boats docked far and wide. Nets lay drying on walls, and women plodded up and down from the mussel beds with huge creels on their backs. Gulls swooped and fought over every scrap left on the ground. The sky hung low, a grey-green wash full of golden cloud. Men fished and women sold their catch. And that’s the way it would go, on and on, sure as the turn of the tide and the wax and wane of the moon.

Spencer returned after a few minutes with a silver tray, set with a coffee pot and two cups and a saucer of scones.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘do you like jam on your scones or a touch of whipped cream, or both?’

Well, I had never had anything on a scone apart from a scrape of butter, and I piled my scone high and proceeded to devour it. He watched, amused.

‘I see you prefer the high life to the fishing life,’ he observed, the mischievous grin flashing away. He poured the coffee and lit his pipe. ‘But I don’t think you live the high life now.’

Well, what could I do but shake my head?

‘Your folks have you skivvying, do they? I bet you can bait a line in no time and gut a fish in the blink of an eye. Break a chicken’s neck and have it in a pot quick as anything. I bet you can set a fire better than any London maid, and darn a sock neat as any seamstress could. I bet you can command the best price for your fish at that market.’

He had me to a tee.

‘But you don’t want any of that, do you? You want a fine house and a serving girl or two of your own.’

‘Mibbie,’ I replied. ‘But I hardly know you enough to talk about what I want and don’t want.’

He chuckled, but without much mirth, then changed tack.

‘So your old ma and da have some connections, eh?’ he went on, and I feared he might start asking questions about all of that. I already had a response, which was what we were to say to anyone who started asking questions about their side-line.

‘I don’t know anything about that,’ I answered. ‘But they are honest as the day is long and have sold fish for five generations at least.’

‘Five generations at least,’ he repeated. ‘Well, never mind all of that for a minute. Look, here.’ He pushed a small brown-paper packet across the table and nodded at me to unwrap it. He watched as I dabbed my mouth with my kerchief and wiped my hands before picking it up.

‘Wait! Don’t open it yet. Inhale its scent first.’

His voice was low now, conspiratorially so, and I swear his eyes and freckles got flashier; and I even declare that the room darkened, such was the drama of the moment. I put the packet to my lips, gently, and sniffed, trying to do so in a ladylike fashion, but of course I had never had to do anything in a ladylike fashion before, so it may have been a rather amateur attempt. But oh, the scent!

‘Perfume ingredients,’ he said. ‘Exquisite, too. Musk and ambergris and cinnamon and civet and myrrh. The perfumiers of London are clamouring for them. For gents’ wig-powders and ladies’ gloves. In fact all the upper crust is desperate for the most expensive scents; and the ladies of Covent Garden, and the opera-goers and the blue-bloods. Perfumes and potions and eaux de cologne.’

Perfumed gloves! What would Ma make of that? ‘So, you are a trader,’ I said.

‘Indeed, Mistress Dickson, I am. But I keep that a bit of a secret, you see, as I have a man in the port of Gothenburg who passes me some very precious goods that are vital items in perfume receipts, and in turn I have set up a buyer in London, who is a man with a shop that makes bespoke perfumes for his clients. But neither I nor he is minded to pay the high prices on the open market or the import taxes, if you catch my drift, which I am sure you will, as your own ma and da make their spare pennies from folk like me. The tea men,’ he added, when I pretended to look puzzled. ‘Except that the difference between the tea men and myself is that there is more money to be made in a pouch of perfume ingredients than there is in a sack of tea. For whilst tea soothes the soul, perfume is medicinal.’

He paused to sip his coffee, making sure I was listening, intent, which I most certainly was.

‘It is,’ he went on, ‘I do believe, a magical potion that can turn a gent’s head and make a plain lady quite alluring, or make an unwashed gent smell clean. Some say it can purify a room of disease.’ He stopped here, aware that he had got a bit carried away with himself, but nonetheless I saw it all. I did! I saw the brassy door-plates of the perfumiers’ shops. I saw the glassy bottles on the ladies’ dressing tables. I saw their maids sneak a dab or two as they dusted and cleaned, unable to help themselves. In short, I saw the London of my own dreams, and this time I could smell it too. It smelled not of dank, sulphurous Thames water or beggars’ grot. Not of reeking rush candles or billowing chimneys, or armpit sweat or rat piss, as Joan declared it would. Not of the mussel bait or stale whitefish that hung in the air of Fisherrow. It smelled of perfume and riches and romance.

I didn’t take the perfume packet home with me that morning. Spencer tried to press it on me, but I was not about to be caught with that in my scrapbook, for it would no doubt match the unique scent of Spencer’s parcel and Joan would be on to me straight away; or, worse, Da. Instead I savoured two cups of strong coffee and both scones and declared myself fit to burst. Buzzing from the drinks, I sat back in my chair and listened to Patrick Spencer.

‘I shall be around for another day or two, but then I am back to London, to sell my parcel and obtain monies for the next few,’ he said confidently. ‘My buyer was assured by a packet just like this one, and I want to shift things as quick as I can. But I shall be back and I do hope we might meet again, Mistress Dickson? You see I don’t often meet someone who I think shares my kind of ambition in life, and I believe you might.’

He looked nervous then and ran his fingers though his hair. Nervous, waiting to hear what I would say.

‘We could have coffee here again, I suppose,’ I replied.

He smiled and leaned forward.

‘I am glad you’d like to do this again. I must confess, Mistress Dickson, that I find myself quite taken with you.’

Quite taken! I was quite taken myself. For the first time in my life, I felt a connection with a man.

‘Thank you, Mr Spencer,’ I said. ‘It’s been a most charming morning.’

‘It certainly has,’ he replied.

When I bade him goodbye, he stood up and showed me to the parlour door. He bowed and put out his hand. I took it, feeling the firm touch of his fingers. Slowly, his eyes fixed on mine all the while, he lifted my hand to his lips and kissed it.

It was only the brush of his lips on the back of my hand, but it lit up my entire body.