Our faces told her that we were none the wiser.
“Oh dear,” she said, and reached for her glass of Canary and went on: “Your uncle you know was in spices and travelled halfway round the world in pursuit of his trade. It happened that he had another… another kind of wife… and these were his children. I did not know of their – or their mother’s – existence until I came across some papers after his death… The other… kind of wife… died of a fever, and her people rejected the children, and they were like to starve, so your uncle brought them to England. He told me nothing of all this, of course, as he thought it would hurt me, as indeed it would have, as he and I had no children together.” This was the only point at which her composure threatened to disintegrate, but she regained herself at once. “I discovered he had been paying a sailor’s wife to look after them, but when he died and the money stopped, she turned them over to the poorhouse in Portsmouth. That is where I found them, and brought them here.” She seemed to consider her empty glass, before adding, as an afterthought, “Only Cook knows.”
Evelyn and I were speechless for some moments. Then Evelyn, who always seemed to know the right thing to do, kissed our aunt and said she could rely on us both to protect our little cousins and to keep their history secret. We redoubled our assurances the next day as we waved our aunt off. As her coach went out of sight, we little guessed that the three of us would never be together again.
14
We had the household well organised by this time and had more leisure hours than hitherto, so went to confer with Cook about some special dishes from “the girt book” for the forthcoming dinner party. In the event, Sylvia made her excuses and remained in her room (she did indeed vomit most strenuously throughout the early months of her pregnancy) and Roger simply did not turn up.
By this time Roger and Sylvia had nothing more in common than their name and their misery. As soon as Aunt Madge had departed, Roger liberated himself from any pretence at husbandly dutifulness, and went out early and often. This meant we were left alone to entertain Sylvia, which did not discommode us too greatly in the mornings, as she rarely rose before noon, and after that she did not want our company any more than we wanted hers, though, because she looked for no employment, her time lay heavy on her hands, and she often sought us out if only to have someone to bear witness to her vexation.
As a result, we often took refuge in the kitchen, where we knew Sylvia would never deign to descend, and were treated to Cook’s insights into life. Roger, she said, had always been a bad ’un. She showed not the slightest interest in Sylvia, although warned us about the terrific expenses of motherhood where a lady of quality was concerned; there would be cawdles, wines, sugar, soap, nurse, pot, pan, ladle and cradle needed, as well as fire and candle, a coral with bells for the child to rattle and twenty more odd knacks, whereas less fine children made do with tit, she said, and thrived just the same. She warned that, when the time came, our aunt could expect “an apothecary’s bill more barbarous, even, than Roger’s tailor’s.”
One night Roger came home just as Evelyn and I were locking up and told us some of his companions were joining him and we had best take ourselves to bed. He was already in his cups and knocked a candlestick over without seeming to notice, so Evelyn righted it and told me we had best stay awake until the revellers had gone, to be sure Roger did not set the house alight. Once Roger’s guests had arrived, we settled ourselves on a couch on the first floor landing, where we could see into the hall and not be observed. The door to the dining room, where they assembled, being open, we could plainly hear most of what was said.
“So where’s the lovely Sylvia?” asked one, who from his high voice I recognised to be Jack from the first night at the playhouse.
“A pox on Sylvia. I am tired of her already. Pox on it that a man can’t drink without quenching his thirst,” said Roger, to universal laughter.
“And is she tired of you?” asked another I presumed to be Tom, one of Roger’s playhouse companions.
“I fully expect so,” said Roger, and belched loudly. “Ours is a marriage of inconvenience.” During the ensuing laughter one of the men rolled out of the door into the hall, vomited perfunctorily in a corner, and returned to the company. Evelyn and I looked at each other and said nothing.
“Still, there is Sophia... ” said Jack.
“... and Lucy... ” said Tom.
“... and Moll – there’s one that swives like a stoat!” said Roger, to cackles from the company.
I looked at Evelyn as I didn’t know what ‘swive’ meant and her expression told me she guessed, but did not care to say.
“If I had such a bitch I should spay her,” piped Jack.
“Roger, dear heart,” said Tom, “you’ve had more whores than Sodom’s walls ever bounded – what, pray, has this Moll to make her so favoured of the sisterhood?”
“Ecod! Not just plain Moll, I prithee, give her her full title, Posture Moll. Egad, the slut’s a veritable gymnast,” asserted Roger.
I understood gymnast to be a very filthy word as at this Evelyn pulled me away and up to bed. Much later I heard her coming into the room again.
“They’ve gone,” she whispered. “I’ve put out the lights and left Roger snoring on the floor. They’ve left a terrible mess of things.” Indeed in the morning the dining room looked as though a carthorse had pulled his load through it.
Mr Fluke and Dr Rookham arrived as usual for the monthly dinner, though as I have said only Evelyn and I were present to receive them. They were very kind and I realised that however curmudgeonly they seemed they took very seriously the compact they had made with our aunt about keeping an eye on us. They were a good deal surprised at some of the dishes Cook had prepared for the event which she had got from her girt book, all of which featured, in some form, custard, which had been a great discovery to her. Still, we made merry, although the conversation took a more serious turn when Mr Fluke mentioned that he had seen his first shut-up house on the way to us, as he passed through Drury Lane.
I did not know the significance of this, so Evelyn explained that when there was the plague in a house, it was shut up by the authorities – the windows and doors nailed up – and a guard was set to watch it to make sure no one went out, and they put a red cross on the door and painted ‘May God Have Mercy On Our Souls’ on it to warn people how dangerous a matter it was to have ado them, and to resist bribery and so on. If, after such and such a time, others in the same house were hale, the red cross was changed to a white cross and if, after such and such a number of days (I forget now) everyone was still well, the quarantine was lifted. It was a safety measure to check the spread of the infection, Dr Rookham said. He had been called to a few cases, but as the disease was so infectious, he never went near the patient, but asked questions of their family and prescribed remedies from the door. He was confident there were more cases than were reported, as families naturally feared being shut up with a diseased person.
Seeing the expression on my face he told me not to worry, just to keep away from St Giles, which was the hotbed, and assured us that there had not yet been, to his knowledge, any cases within the city walls. Mr Fluke begged to differ with him on this point, saying that it had indeed spread to the city and also to Westminster, causing some nervous people of quality to remove into the country. Worse, he said, some men of the cloth, on whom the poor people depended in time of need, and even doctors, had taken fright and gone out of town. Still, he said, there were plague cases every year, and even in epidemic years it was always the poorer parishes that took the brunt and there was no cause for alarm. Dr Rookham told us to ensure we washed everything we bought, to see that the servants did the same, to avoid crowds and to breathe no noxious fumes; he reassured us that by these means we would escape infection. Given that Cheapside was a perpetual mobile throng this would prove difficult, but we were at least to implement his instruction to wash everything, especially food.