Mrs. Cook Read online

  James may have lost no lives to scurvy but nothing Elizabeth did prevented her people from dying—baby Joseph, Mr Blackburn, and now Mama. It was as if in the break to the pattern of her life with James, death had found its way in. She wanted the old life back, for him to resume the work in Newfoundland and come home every winter.

  But another winter passed and still James did not come. The voyage had now gone on longer than both Lord Byron’s and Wallis’s. Elizabeth watched the stars that guided her husband, she felt the winds that carried him on their great arcs around the globe. She sniffed the air for signs of him, and breathed her love back out, long gentle waves of it. He was still living, she told herself. She could not bear it if anything had happened to him.

  So she grew stiff-lipped with disapproval of the wagers that were going around London as to the loss or not of the Endeavour. Englishmen would bet on anything, but this was not the bearpit or the cockfighting ring. The boys brought home tales from school—even children were making wagers—and Jamie and Nat had to defend their absent father with fisticuffs.

  It was more than disapproval; Elizabeth felt as if they were burying James alive, and she with him. When the children were sleeping, Elizabeth wrote to the Admiralty, begging pardon for her humble letter but asking for news of the barque Endeavour.

  Worse, much worse than the games of chance was the account in Bingley’s Journal. The rumours were in print:

  It is surmised, that one ground of the present preparations for war, is some secret intelligence received by the Ministry, that the Endeavour man of war, which was sent into the South Sea with the astronomers, to make observations, and afterwards to go into a new track to make discoveries, has been sunk, with all her people, by order of a jealous Court, who has committed other hostilities against us in the Southern hemisphere. Mr Banks, and the famous Dr Solander, were on board the above vessel, and are feared to have shared the common fate with the rest of the ship’s company.

  ‘Scurrilous,’ announced Cousin Charles, who at eighteen sported a grey wig and had the air of someone much older. Now that his father had passed away Charles had taken it upon himself to be head of the family. ‘It is surmised,’ he began reading. ‘That is all.’

  ‘They do not mention James, or Isaac,’ Elizabeth pointed out. ‘Only Mr Banks and Dr Solander. Do they think the vessel is sailing itself? Is my husband only a coach driver?’ Elizabeth and her cousin looked at each other. Of course the newspaper would only mention Mr Banks and Dr Solander. They were gentlemen.

  ‘Perhaps a letter to the Admiralty,’ suggested Charles.

  ‘I have written,’ said Elizabeth, ‘but had no answer.’

  Charles went in person to call on the board, but Mr Stephens said they’d received no intelligence concerning the matter.

  ‘He is alive,’ said Elizabeth with determination, ‘I know he is. They have missed the trade winds, that is all. We shall see them in the spring.’

  Their wedding anniversary passed, and another Christmas without James. Nevertheless Elizabeth made an occasion of it, with presents for James beneath the tree. He may have found the Great South Land, he may even be back in the Atlantic, on his way home, Elizabeth didn’t know, but in her mind he was always in the South Seas. ‘It is warm where Papa is, and perhaps he has a coconut tree instead of a fir, but he is celebrating Christmas nevertheless.’

  Jamie was growing so quickly that Elizabeth seemed to spend much of her time either making new clothes for him or altering the old. He looked so much like James that she almost cried to see it. Nat was a big boy too, but with the angular features of Mama’s family. Eliza remained tiny, despite Elizabeth’s attempts to feed her, but she was a pretty little girl with such dainty features that she resembled a doll.

  ‘Will they have fireworks?’ asked Nat.

  ‘Of course,’ said Elizabeth. ‘And all manner of things to eat, which Papa will tell you about when he comes home.’

  ‘Bullet pudding?’ asked Eliza.

  Elizabeth was hard-pressed to imagine James playing bullet pudding with Mr Banks, Mr Green and Dr Solander and the others, but ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course they will play bullet pudding.’

  ‘And Papa will win!’ exclaimed Eliza.

  Though Elizabeth regularly showed Eliza and the boys James’s likeness, she wondered if their daughter remembered him in person. One day Eliza had asked: ‘Is Papa like the Almighty?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He is our father but we never see him.’

  ‘We will see Papa soon,’ said Elizabeth, hugging her daughter to her. ‘In spring.’

  ‘Spring?’

  ‘After the snow is gone. When the leaves come back on the trees, and the daffodils appear in the grass. Then we will see Papa.’

  On Christmas night Elizabeth took her husband to bed. Not the real one, thousands of miles away, but her imagined husband. She saw his dark hair flowing over his shoulders, the brightness of his eyes when he looked at her, his strong shoulders and the muscles flexing in his arms when he reached down for her. She heard the voice that could thunder orders to his crew, murmur her name. Elizabeth. In her mind she travelled over every inch of his body, caressed his chest and felt the heart beating there. She even imagined the ultimate intimacy and found herself sighing for want of him. If her imagined husband produced such a response, the real one must surely live.

  Eliza saw the trees bud with leaves, and the first daffodils of spring appear in the grass, but she never again saw her Papa. In the blustery March winds she caught cold, and despite lemon juice and infusions of thyme, and even the physician’s letting of her blood, she got worse and worse. Her little chest was racked with coughs, her forehead drenched with sweat, but the malady was tenacious and would not let go.

  ‘Preserve her, oh Lord, let her father see her once again.’ It was a wish prayed for with all Elizabeth’s heart and soul, a prayer she gave out through every pore of her body. When she looked up from prayer she saw Eliza, still smiling, almost bemused to find this thing, this evil disease, living inside her. The boys were sent to stay down the street with Frances and Mr Lieber so that Elizabeth could give her full attention to Eliza. She sat by the bed, wiping her brow, arranging cushions to make the little girl more comfortable.

  She brought in daffodils, and hens’ eggs for Eliza to feel the smooth brown shells. Eliza’s favourite doll grew sticky with sweat but still she would not let go of it. Elizabeth told her stories of the South Seas, and Papa soon returning, although she had not one shred of news herself. Her stories were buoyant with hope. ‘Papa is drinking milk from coconuts. They are fruit as big as your head and they have rough brown fur on them like a monkey.’ Elizabeth showed her daughter a picture of a monkey from a book of animals. ‘When you are better, Eliza, we will go to Regent’s Park and see all the animals.’ ‘Yes, Mama,’ answered Eliza hoarsely.

  At the start of the second week of April, Elizabeth had spent the night beside her daughter, wiping her brow, crushing lavender leaves in her hands to release fragrance that might ease the child’s laboured breathing.

  When the sky grew pink with dawn Elizabeth whispered, ‘The sun is coming, Eliza.’

  ‘Sun.’ Eliza opened her eyes and smiled.

  Elizabeth grew frantic with hope that daylight had brought the answer to her prayers. But Eliza’s breath grew softer and softer till it was no more.

  Frances brought the boys back, and Elizabeth stood vigil, a candle flickering in its brace on the wall. The candle continued burning well into the day, Elizabeth not having the heart to snuff it out, wondering why the Lord giveth if only to take away again in such a short time. The boys had already been in to see Eliza. ‘She has gone to God,’ Elizabeth had explained. They had stood there watching, as if Eliza might simply wake up and smile at them, Nat with eyes wide to stop tears pouring down his cheeks, Jamie staunch and serious, the man of the family.

  Elizabeth looked out the window, dry-eyed, at the birds darting among the apple blosso
ms, the hens scratching on the ground. One of them drew a worm from the soil; Elizabeth saw its struggling body hanging from the hen’s beak before it disappeared down her gullet.

  She felt a hand on her shoulder. Frances. ‘I know what must be done,’ said Elizabeth grimly. ‘I am not yet ready.’

  Why did the world keep on turning, the sun rise inexorably on to a new day? For Eliza to die in the spring when everything was coming alive again . . . Elizabeth wanted it all to stop. She did not want to be swept along in the current of life. There should be a time for standing still, for everything to come to a halt as it had in her heart. It was worse than baby Joseph. To have little Eliza for four years, then never ever have her again. Not to see her nose wrinkle with delight when she chased the hens, to hear her sweet little voice tell the neighbours: ‘Papa is in the South Seas. He will be home in spring.’

  Elizabeth was aware of an aroma and the sound of footsteps. When she finally turned from the window she saw a thick slice of cheese toast, grown cold. There was no room inside Elizabeth for food, it was entirely taken up with a greyness as vast as a dirty sky. She looked once again at the blue sky outside. Perhaps it was better that James was lost at sea, as the newspaper said. Better than coming home to two dead children.

  Eliza was buried beside Joseph in St Dunstan’s. The vicar had met the funeral procession at the entrance to the churchyard, and stopped before the small coffin. Elizabeth was dressed in black, Jamie and Nat by her side. The vicar nodded in recognition of his parishioner and Elizabeth bowed her head. ‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.’

  The words hovered about Elizabeth’s head like March flies, a droning bereft of meaning, in which she found no succour.

  PORTRAIT OF SIR HUGH PALLISER BY GEORGE DANCE

  Elizabeth, dressed in mourning black, was cleaning out the fire. It was a dirty job, coal dust rising into her nose, but she cared not a jot for her own discomfort. Apart from the interment, Elizabeth had not left the house since Eliza’s death. The curtains were still drawn, though by the noise outside she could tell it was a fine day. Elizabeth did not want to go out into the sunshine, it was too much at odds with the darkness inside her.

  It pleased her to be doing the dirty work of cleaning out the fire. She was on her knees, no apron, her black satin dress smudged. She swept and swept at the fireplace, filling the cinder box with ash. Some of it flurried up to her face, settling on her cheeks and stinging her eyes. She did nothing to try to stop it. Her insides felt as if they’d turned to ash anyway, so dry that she had not been able to shed even one tear for Eliza. She had stopped praying, severed her connection to the Lord. Perhaps if she were covered in ash He would think her dead and no longer seek her out.

  Elizabeth began applying blacklead to the grate with a soft brush. It had an unpleasant smell that made her feel sick, but she did not waver from the chore. She used a harder brush to rub off the excess, vigorously working her arms into it till they ached. She wiped the back of her hand across her forehead, smudging it with ash, as someone knocked at the door.

  The knocking persisted. Elizabeth took her time, arranging the brushes and making sure the cinder box did not tip its contents all over the floor. The sound at the door stopped. The person had finally gone away. But no, three final knocks, a light but firm hand.

  Elizabeth got up off the floor. She took no care to fix her hair, or even wash her hands. The caller would see her just as she was.

  A navy man. He looked familiar to Elizabeth but it was as if she were viewing him through a fog.

  ‘Is Mrs Cook at home?’ he asked.

  She recognised him now his oval face with its kindly expression. Hugh Palliser. The fellow Yorkshireman was a friend of James’s; he had first been his captain, then governor of Newfoundland, and recently, this year of 1771, Comptroller of the Navy Board. He was wearing a long jacket with wide lapels, similar to the one in the portrait James had taken her to see. She recalled Mr Palliser’s casual pose in the portrait, his elbow resting on a column, elegant fingers hanging from a lace cuff, the vague outlines of a ship in the background.

  The opened door threw light onto Elizabeth and her darkened house. She saw herself in the mirror of Mr Palliser’s eyes. She looked like a chimneysweep. Be that as it may. For Mr Palliser to coming knocking on her door in person, it must be important. Had the Almighty not finished with her after all? Was Mr Palliser about to announce the news she dreaded most?

  ‘May I come in, Mrs Cook?’ he said, recognising her now. He showed no surprise at her forlorn state.

  He came in and, although she offered him the sofa, waited till she sat before he did so. It made no difference to Elizabeth whether she sat or stood. Eventually she sat on the edge of a chair.

  Mr Palliser sharpened the edge of his hat with long elegant fingers. ‘My deepest sympathies for your recent loss,’ he said.

  Elizabeth bowed her head, accepting his condolences.

  He paused, giving the dead their due. ‘But I come on a happier matter. Intelligence which may lift your spirits. You may have heard reports that the Endeavour was lost—indeed, we feared so ourselves. But,’ he said, placing the hat beside him on the sofa, ‘we recently have advice from the India house that the Endeavour arrived in Batavia on the tenth of October, last. All well on board. We can expect them soon.’

  All well, we can expect them soon. The words Elizabeth had so longed for had been spoken in her house. She slumped into the back of the chair, not giving one thought to the possible dirt she was spreading. She felt tears flood into her eyes. Tears of relief for James, and a well of sadness for Eliza. ‘Oh, Mr Palliser, thank you, thank you,’ she said, as if he himself were responsible for the glad tidings. ‘I don’t know . . . I . . .’ She gave herself over completely to the flood of tears.

  Though a bachelor, Mr Palliser seemed not the least embarrassed by her display of emotion. Instead, he reached into his pocket and offered her a white lace handkerchief. She buried her face in it, smelling its subtle perfume, drenching it with her tears. She did not realise she had such a flood of them inside her.

  When they were finally spent, she lifted her face and saw how besmirched the handkerchief was. ‘I am so sorry, Mr Palliser.’

  He waved away her apologies, the handkerchief remaining in her lap, a bond between her and him. She was full of admiration for James’s old friend. A man in his position could simply have sent a message, but he had come in person.

  The lightness, the sea breeze that Hugh Palliser had brought into the house stayed, even after he had gone. It was mid-May, and high time for spring-cleaning. When the boys were at school, Elizabeth, Frances and Mrs Pore from down the street cleaned the house, literally from top to bottom.

  Rugs were taken outside and beaten, blankets and bed linen washed and hung out in the spring sunshine to dry. All the upstairs furniture was covered with dusting sheets while the rooms were swept. Elizabeth cleaned the wallpapers, first by blowing the dust off with bellows, then with a section of white bread, holding onto the crust and wiping downwards in deft, light strokes. Mirrors were cleaned with a mixture of water and gin.

  The three women together took down the curtain poles, and Mrs Pore cleaned them with vinegar, then rubbed them with furniture polish. Frances got down on her knees and cleaned the kitchen floor with sand and hot water. Elizabeth took the heavy velvet bed curtains down and replaced them with the linen ones, having first hung these outside for the breeze to disperse the smell of camphor. The hens in the yard scattered at the flurry of activity, clucking disapproval of the disturbance to their ways. When the wind flapped the curtains hanging on the line, the hens remembered they were birds and even managed, with a few fluttery wing movements, to become airborne. Elizabeth took hold of the bottom corners of one curtain, felt the pull as the wind filled it. ‘Frances, look!’ she cried with delight. ‘I am sailing.’

/>   Daily they waited for the return of the Endeavour and at night Elizabeth listened to the wind, judging its direction and speed, waiting for the wind that would bring her husband home. Batavia was half a world away, but it had been more than six months earlier that they were there.

  A fortnight into July, on a day when the breeze was fresh and the weather fine, Elizabeth came inside with an apron full of eggs to find a message. She carefully placed the eggs in a dish, wiped her hands down the apron, picked up the letter and recognised Mr Palliser’s handwriting. She broke open the seal. The Endeavour had been sighted off Dover. Elizabeth told herself to be calm, but she could not be. She was thirty, yet she skipped about with the same gaiety as a five year old.

  On the evening of Wednesday 18 July, he came. He stood in the doorway, just as Elizabeth had first seen him when she was thirteen. She saw his beloved features, and the three hard years of waiting dissolved away. She felt waves rippling through her as they embraced, smelled the vestiges of the sea on him. She wanted to press against him like this forever. But forever would have to wait. The boys were here to greet their father. Jamie and Nat looked at him, as tall and strong in the flesh as he was in their memory. Elizabeth noticed a few grey hairs at James’s temples, felt her heart miss a beat as she saw the scar on the hand that he extended to the boys.

  She heard a bleating, and beyond him, beyond the trunks and paraphernalia from the voyage, saw a goat. It was so unexpected that she laughed.

  ‘You have brought a goat?’

  ‘The goat,’ James stressed, ‘that has now twice circumnavigated the globe. She deserves a well-earned rest. I can think of no better place than our garden.’

  ‘Best we install her there then,’ said Elizabeth, ‘before she eats your sea chests.’