In age the stranger was between my mother and Bissett, and although not tall, he had the head of a much larger man. A mass of curly, reddish hair tumbled about his ears from his high-domed head. His animated face on which every passing emotion seemed to register, was dominated by a large beak-like nose. His mouth was wide and thin and his eyes, deep beneath the jutting eye-ridges, were large and very blue. He was wearing trowsers which had once had a pattern of checks and squares but were faded so that the design was barely discernible; a coarse round frock-coat whose green cloth was worn bare in places; and a white stock that, although of fine wool, was now of a yellowish hue. I might not have taken all this in if Bissett had not been watching them so closely, but seeing my mother like that it suddenly came to me that she had a life of which I knew nothing, and in that moment she seemed herself a stranger to me.
The man broke off when he saw Bissett and me looking at him, and touched his hat ceremoniously to each of us.
“And a very good evenin’ to you, too, mistress, and to the little genel’man. I was jist explainin’ to this young lady,” he addressed himself to Bissett but with a friendly eye included me in his speech, “how it is that I find meself, a stranger passin’ through this country to seek work, havin’ to seek charity of strangers, which is a thing I haven’t never done a-fore.”
He spoke rapidly, and in a manner that was unfamiliar to me, so that I had to strain to catch his meaning. As he talked he glanced backwards and forwards between my mother and my nurse as if trying to judge which of the two it was the more important to win over.
“So will you help a poor honest workin’-man down on his luck,” he said to my mother, “to find a night’s lodgin’ and wittles arter a hard day’s tramp?”
“Be off with you,” Bissett suddenly cried.
In an instant the man’s face darkened and his brows drew together as he turned towards Bissett.
“Get off now,” Bissett called out again, perhaps alarmed by his expression. “Or I’ll go for Mr Pimlott.”
The stranger’s features lightened instantly and he said: “Why, I’d be happy to speak to the genel’man of the house.”
At this Bissett glanced towards my mother who blushed and looked down. Puzzled, the man turned to me: “Where is your father, young genel’man?”
“I don’t have one.”
“Come, young master,” he said, smiling at my mother, “everyone has one.”
“Oh no, I never have had one.”
“Take yourself away, and your impertinence,” Bissett cried.
As if she had not spoken the stranger addressed my mother: “What do you say, Mrs Pimlott? Will you not spare a few pennies?”
“Mr Pimlott’s the gardener, you silly man,” I cried. “Our name’s Mellamphy.”
“Why then, Mrs Mellamphy,” he said. “Will you sarve me?”
“I … I don’t believe I have any money with me.”
As my mother spoke she nervously touched the cylindrical silver box which always hung from the chain around her waist on which she kept the household keys, and I noticed the man’s large eyes rest inquisitively on it.
“What,” he said, pointing to it, “not even in there?”
She looked up at him for the first time with an expression of alarm and shook her head vehemently.
“No siller in the house?” he said. “Not even a few coppers?”
Still looking into his face my mother said: “Will you bring me a six-pence from my writing-desk, Bissett?”
“I will not, ma’am,” said my nurse stoutly. “I’ll not leave you and Master Johnnie out of my sight while that rag-a-bond is here.”
“I believe we should help him, nurse. I believe it would be better.”
“Show a little charity, miss’is,” the man said boldly to Bissett.
“Charity’s for them as desarves it, but you’ve a gallows face and I’ll warrant the Law knows summat of you. The only place I’ll go is to fetch the constable and then we s’all see.”
“Why, damn you, you old meddler,” the stranger shouted, his features hardening suddenly. With an oath he stepped forward, raising his stick and putting his other hand upon the gate as if to open it. My mother screamed and stepped back, while I ran forward to defend my territory.
“Don’t you dare come in here!” I cried. “If you do I’ll kick you so hard you’ll fall over and then I’ll sit on you until Mr Pimlott comes.”
He scowled down at me as my mother and nurse hurried forward to pull me back from the gate, but then as he looked towards them there appeared a smile that frightened me more than his previous grimace: “Why you didn’t think I meant to come in, did you? I amn’t sich a flatt as to bring the Law down upon me like that.”
“I’ll run for the constable now, ma’am, while you take the boy inside,” said Bissett breathlessly.
“Don’t give yourself the trouble,” said the stranger laconically. “I’ll bid you good day, Mrs Mellamphy,” he added and, shrugging his shoulders, turned and walked quickly up the lane.
My mother knelt with her arms around my neck, and hugged me: “You were so brave, Johnnie,” she said, kissing me and laughing and almost sobbing at the same time. “But you mustn’t, you mustn’t.”
“If he’d come in I’d have frightened him away,” I boasted.
Looking over her shoulder and through the mass of golden curls, I watched the stranger walking away with an odd, lolloping stride, his shoulders strangely hunched. Just as he reached the corner of the High-street he turned to look back at us. Even from where I was standing, I could see an expression of such concentrated, black-browed malevolence that it burned itself indelibly into my memory. My mother didn’t see this, but I noticed that Bissett had intercepted that look, and I saw her spit surreptitiously on her right index finger and swiftly draw a cross between her eyes.
“Come, Johnnie,” said my mother. And the three of us, my mother still keeping her arm on my shoulder, made our way through the back-door into the kitchen.
The cool, spacious kitchen which seemed so dark as we passed into it from the sun-lit garden, had originally been the “house-place” of the ancient farm-house which formed the original core of our cottage, as its huge chimney-place and white, scoured and sanded stone-flagged floor testified. This was Mrs Belflower’s domain, and we now found that good-natured body standing over the fire preparing our tea. I broke from my mother’s hold and danced across the floor towards her:
“Mrs Belflower, Mrs Belflower,” I sang out, “a rag-a-bond just tried to get into the garden but I drove him away. I wasn’t frightened at all.”
“Well, just fancy! Isn’t that nice, dear. I only hope it’s given you a good appetite for your tea,” said the imperturbable cook, turning towards us and wiping her large red hands upon her apron. She had a kindly face as plump and pale as one of her own puddings wrapped in muslin, and rather vague blue eyes that didn’t quite meet your gaze.
Disappointed, I tried again: “He was very fierce, and he said he’d roast me alive if he caught me.”
“Lor’ save us,” said Mrs Belflower rather distantly, her eyes straying to the sideboard where the tea-things were waiting.
“Why, shame on you, Master Johnnie!” Bissett exclaimed. “He said no such thing. You know you mustn’t tell stories.”
“But Mrs Belflower tells stories!” I cried.
“I’m sure I hope she does not,” Bissett said gravely.
“But everybody does: Mamma reads me stories and Mrs Belflower tells me them and even Sukey. Everyone does but you,” I added bitterly.
My mother said quickly: “But we don’t say they’re true when they’re not, Johnnie.”
Bissett commented darkly: “The child has a deal too much fancy, that’s what it is.”
“ ’Tis a terrible thing,” Mrs Belflower put in diplomatically, “when dacent folks is harassed and parsecuted in their own houses by such ruffians.”
“It usen’t to happen. I nivver heard on it when I wor a ga
l,” Bissett agreed. “ ’Tis all them Irishers workin’ on the new ’pike — besides all them that come over for the harvest now. I don’t know why they can’t stay in their own country for they do us no good here but take the bread from the mouths of honest Englishmen.”
“Why mayn’t I see the turnpike?” I cried, reminded by her words of an ancient grievance.
“I don’t believe he was Irish,” said my mother quietly, while Mrs Belflower sympathetically slipped into my hand a small piece of ginger-bread.
“No?” said Bissett. “Well, for sartin he wasn’t a this-country-man by his speech. It weren’t the speech of a Christen man, hardly.”
“He was from London,” my mother said.
“London,” I repeated. I had not heard the word before and the flat, slightly metallic syllables were oddly mysterious.
“Aye,” said Bissett. “That seems like enough for that’s a place where folks aren’t safe in their own houses, by all accounts.”
My mother started and turned pale: “What do you mean?”
Bissett looked at her shrewdly: “Do you not rec’lleck that terrible business a few year back, Mrs Mellamphy? It must have been around about the year Master Johnnie was born or a little a-fore that.”
My mother stared at her in dismay.
“Aye,” said Mrs Belflower. “Along the Ratcliffe-highway, you mean, when two famblies was murdered as they slept in their beds.”
“Aye, you’ve hit it. And there was another, too, about that time — or was it earlier? — when a rich old man was murdered by his own son, or somethin’ o’ that natur’,” Bissett put in and my mother turned away. “It was at Charing-cross. Is that near the Ratcliffe-highway?” My mother said nothing and Bissett went on: “So what I say is, ma’am, to be on the safe side, send that gal for the constable and he’ll see that tramper out o’ the parish.”
My mother spoke with her back still turned to us: “I don’t believe that’s necessary, nurse. He’s best left alone.”
“Anyways, she ain’t here,” Mrs Belflower objected. “She’s gone down to ’Ougham to visit her uncle.” (I might add here that the villagers always referred to “going down” to Hougham even though that village was on higher ground — for the stream that passed through Mortsey-wood behind our house ran down from there — as if to visit the village involved a moral lapse.) “The poor old man was took of a fever last night. They heard about it at home just now and sent young Harry round to fetch her down there.”
“What, upped and gone without no by-your-leave?” Bissett exclaimed. “That gal takes a deal too many liberties. When will she be back?”
“She only left a minute ago,” said Mrs Belflower, rather resentfully.
Between her and Bissett there existed a state of permanent though rarely overt hostility. As England and Russia have long struggled for mastery along the border from Constantinople to the North-west Frontier, so these two faced each other from their domains of kitchen and nursery and struggled for the upper hand throughout a range of less clearly defined spheres of influence. Sukey was their Ottoman Empire.
“Why, who give her leave to go, Mrs Belflower?”
“I done, Mrs Bissett.”
“Then I don’t believe it were your place.”
“Nor no more it ain’t yourn to tell me mine.”
My mother turned suddenly and stamped her foot, exclaiming: “Hold your tongues! Both of you!”
“Well I nivver,” said Bissett and we all three looked at her in surprise.
“Bring the tea-things, Mrs Belflower, and come with me, Johnnie,” she said and walked quickly out of the room. I obeyed, leaving Bissett and the cook in a sudden, outraged alliance.
We went from the older half into the spacious hall, in the newer part of the house, from which led the sitting-room and breakfast-room where we took our meals (except, oddly, breakfast which we had in the little parlour). As we entered the breakfast-room I asked: “Tell me about London.”
“Is everyone conspiring to drive me mad?” she cried. Then she turned and hugged me and said: “I’m sorry, Johnnie. It’s not your fault.”
We seated ourselves at the table and she went on: “I used to live there. That’s all there is to know.”
“When? I thought we had always lived here?”
“Oh, it was before you were born.”
“Tell me about before I was born.”
At this moment Mrs Belflower came in and began to set out the tea-things.
“We won’t talk about it now,” my mother said.
“And what did the man mean about my father? I never had a father, did I?”
I noticed Mrs Belflower’s back stiffen over the side-table where she had put the urn. My mother looked at me reproachfully and I felt a stab of pain mingled with a strange pleasure at the realization that my questions were causing her grief.
“I heard someone say once that I was a ‘poor fatherless boy’,” I went on. “So that must be right, mustn’t it?”
“Thank you, Mrs Belflower,” my mother said. “I can do the rest myself.” When she had left the room my mother said to me: “Who said that to you, Johnnie?”
“Oh, someone in the chandler’s shop said it to Bissett. So tell me!”
My mother clasped and unclasped her hands: “When you’re older,” she said at last.
“When? At Christmas?”
“Not this Christmas.”
“Then the one after next?”
“No, darling. Perhaps the one after that.”
Thirty months! It might have been as many years.
Although I tried to persuade her, she would neither bring the date nearer nor answer any more of my questions.
When Mrs Belflower had returned and finished clearing the table, my mother asked her to bring her writing-stand and letter-case from the parlour and we went into the sitting-room — a beautifully light room with a good view of the High-street. Then she unlocked her escritoire and took out the large pocket-book in which she wrote her letters, as was customary in that time before the Penny Post. While she was writing I got out my soldiers and marshalled them on the carpet, but since my mother wouldn’t look at what was going on when I asked her to, it wasn’t as much fun as usual. Usually I dreaded the moment when Bissett would knock on the door and I would be condemned to bed and sleep, but tonight I was, if not looking forward to it, at least resigned. And there was still the prospect of teazing Bissett.
However, this evening at about the time that my arrest was due, there was a sudden hammering at the street-door. We both started and my mother looked up from the letter she was writing and exclaimed:
“Who can that be at this time?”
We heard Bissett answer the door and a moment later she came into the room, the flow of her indignation in full spate: “ ’Tis really shameful, ma’am. Those men have left that ladder out there in the airey right under the winder of the parlour as if this was their own yard.”
“Oh yes. They told Mrs Belflower that they had had such difficulty getting it over the railings that they hadn’t time to do it tonight and they would come back for it tomorrow. But who was it at the door?”
“The letter-carrier’s gal,” Bissett answered indignantly. “That Sally, a saucy-faced little baggage. Coming to the front door bold as brass. Said she was a-feared to go up the lane in the dark, but I told her off for that, you can be sure. Nivver too young to larn your place.”
“And did she bring anything?” my mother enquired.
“Aye, she brung you this, with ten-pence to pay which I give her myself.”
She reached into the pocket that hung by her hussif while my mother took the letter and handed her the money from her escritoire.
“Well,” said my inexorable gaoler, “this young gentleman’s for bed, as soon as he has cleared up his play-things.”
Now of course I was determined that I didn’t want to go: “Oh, Mamma, can’t I have just a little longer?” I begged.
“Well, just a few minute
s,” she said absently as she broke the seal.
I smiled triumphantly at my nurse and her face darkened as she strode quickly from the room. At that moment a smaller, sealed missive fell from my mother’s letter and landed on the floor near me. I picked it up and as I handed it to her my eyes fell on the superscription, which, as I held it, was upside down. I had only just begun to learn my letters but I knew that our name began with an “M”, and since this was easy to recognise even inverted, I was surprised to see that the name on this smaller epistle began with a different letter — a “C”. I could not think of any explanation for this.
Pretending to be still playing, I watched my mother put down the letter she had read first and quickly tear open the smaller missive. It must have been short for she read it quickly, and frowned and bit her lip. She then placed the two letters inside the silver case and locked it with one of the keys at her waist. She looked up and saw that I was watching her.
“This was my father’s,” she said, showing me the case. “He gave it to me on the day …” She broke off.
“Tell me!” I exclaimed. “When did my father give it to you?”
She looked at me in sudden surprise and I saw that her face was flushed. Then she laughed: “I was talking not of your father but of mine. You see, my father was your grandfather.”
“I think I understand,” I said slowly. “Tell me about him.”
“Now, Johnnie, we’ve just agreed not to talk about any of that until you’re older. But I have some good news to tell you. How would you …”
At that moment Bissett’s entry interrupted us. Just as she was about to take me into custody, my mother held out the letter-case and said: “Bissett, will you put this in the parlour so that I’ll be sure to see it in the morning, for I must remember to answer it first thing.”
I stood up quickly and snatched it from her: “I’ll do it!” I cried.