Mrs. Cook Read online

  Isaac glanced at Elizabeth before taking the scissors, remembering her warning that instruments were not playthings and he wasn’t to touch anything without express permission. Elizabeth made a gesture indicating he should go ahead. Isaac cut the string, enjoying the crisp snip the scissors made, wound the string off the package, and put it into his pocket. There were a thousand and one things a boy could do with string. James removed the wrapping with a flourish, as if revealing a dove that had supposedly vanished.

  This was the most mysterious instrument of all. ‘It’s called a theodolite. For determining the angles between each end of the line and a more distant object, like a tree, or the mast of a ship. These three instruments give us a pattern of triangles. All you have to do then is plot points onto paper and join up the dots.’

  Elizabeth smiled at how easy her husband made it sound, as simple as a child’s puzzle rather than the painstaking work it was. It might be dangerous too—attacks from Indians, wild animals, to say nothing of the hidden rocks and shoals of the coastline itself. Elizabeth took in a breath. She must rein in thoughts of what might or might not happen while he was away. He was here now.

  She moved in for a closer look at this theodolite, an instrument which James had talked of but she had never seen. It was made of brass, including the screws, a tube set upon a toothed wheel, a tube that would be released from its clasps and brought up to the vertical to do its work.

  ‘I’d wager this is the only house in Shadwell to have a . . . thee . . . theodite,’ Isaac struggled with the word.

  ‘The-od-o-lite,’ said James, separating the word out into its syllables. ‘And you’re too young to wager, Isaac.’

  The instruments were examined and re-examined late into the night. It was only when Elizabeth noticed that Isaac was beginning to resemble an owl that she suggested it was time for bed. As Elizabeth and James made their way upstairs they heard young Isaac say: ‘Theodolite.’

  ‘What was that?’ James asked.

  ‘Goodnight,’ murmured Isaac from beneath his blanket by the fire. ‘I said goodnight.’

  A PLAN OF ST JOHN’S

  Newfoundland was a great inkblot piece of land facing the Atlantic on one side and the Gulf of St Lawrence on the other, a big doorstop of rock on the threshold of Quebec, Labrador and the rest of Canada. The edges of the inkblot, where they drizzled into the sea, formed a fringe of harbours and bays, cliffs, rocks and shoals, the indentations adding up to a total of 6000 miles of coastline. Icebergs travelled on the currents to Newfoundland from the glaciers of Greenland, amassing in the spring like a gathering of huge white clouds. Fog descended so thickly that a man almost lost sight of himself. The fog diminished his senses and left him disoriented. It took more than quadrants and theodolites to get your bearings, and it seemed that your companion had vanished off the face of the earth, even though he might be only two feet away. In summer there was rain. It was not a place for a settlement, yet the British government was investing ten shillings a day, to say nothing of other expenses, to have it surveyed, because Newfoundland had its riches—cod, cod and more cod, with which the offshore banks were teeming. The surveyor’s season was the fisherman’s season. James had to be ready to start work at the beginning of June and not linger later than the end of October.

  That first year as the king’s surveyor, James had a special reason for returning to Elizabeth as soon as possible. With his instruments and books, he had departed for his first season in Newfoundland on 4 May 1763, taking the coach to Plymouth then joining HMS Antelope, which sailed with the tide ten days later. James had left Elizabeth for the summer but he had not left her alone.

  She had wondered whether to tell him before his departure. It was early days, though, and much could happen in the months before his return. A pregnancy did not always mean a living child at the end of it. If that were God’s will, perhaps it would be better that she bore the burden of it alone. But she remembered the words she had so recently and solemnly repeated—for better or worse, in sickness and in health. It was not only honouring this promise. Her happiness was so great that it spilled out of her, and on the eve of his departure she told him that she was with child, knowledge that would buoy and warm him during the cool Canadian summer.

  That night, when they had snuffed out the candles and all was quiet, James drew himself down in the bed and lifted Elizabeth’s nightgown inch by inch, the slowest, surest thing he had ever done in his life. When the garment was level with her breasts, he touched the small mound of her stomach, which was as round and as smooth as a globe. First with his hands, then with his lips. He buried himself in Elizabeth and surrendered to her completely.

  Scientific instruments might be well and good for measuring and mapping the world, but when it came to childbirth, Mama’s advice prevailed. Elizabeth was young and healthy, and Mama saw no reason why a man-midwife with his newfangled instruments should be present. ‘He might know the ins and outs of anatomy,’ Mama said, ‘but he’s never given birth himself, has he? I’ve heard of more than one bungle with those forceps.’ So Elizabeth was attended by old Mrs Sutton, who had delivered many a riverside babe.

  Though the Bible taught that women were to bring forth in pain, nothing had prepared Elizabeth for it. Mama said she could not remember the pain, only the Frost Fair. On 13 October 1763, in the upstairs room where Elizabeth had slept so many months alone, the walls seemed to cave in around her and she was overtaken with searing, shuddering pain; eviscerated, drawn and quartered.

  When she felt the first pains she sent a message to Mama, who arrived with Mrs Sutton and a birthing stool. Elizabeth looked at the horseshoe-shaped seat, which still held a mystery, even though Mama had explained that you squatted over it, the gap providing a space for hands to safely catch the baby. At first Elizabeth had no desire to squat, instead spending her time ranging around the room. She felt extremely uncomfortable, and the only thing that seemed to relieve the discomfort was walking. ‘That’s good,’ Mrs Sutton encouraged her. ‘It makes the baby press downwards.’

  Eventually, though, the pains came more frequently and Elizabeth’s legs turned to jelly. Now she was grateful for the stool. Through the lather of sweat, her hair clinging to her face, she could hear Mrs Sutton say ‘Push’ or ‘Breathe easy’ and though the midwife was right beside her, the voice sounded as if it were coming from a long way away. The pain was hot. Red and raw. Elizabeth gasped and screamed, but like Mrs Sutton’s voice, those sounds also seemed to be coming from afar, from another woman, not Elizabeth.

  Perhaps Elizabeth had ice in her blood, passed on from Mama’s Frost Fair, because she found her haven in the frozen reaches of Canada. ‘Sometimes an iceberg breaks up in a storm, rolls over like a giant in his sleep, dragging those nearby down with him. Ice floes are scattered on the sea like great pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.’ James’s words drifted back to her. ‘On the horizon icebergs are difficult to distinguish from clouds bright with light.’ His voice mapped the shoals and the rocks till Elizabeth’s head was filled with the great jagged edges of Newfoundland. ‘Night is the most dangerous time—you cannot see the ice till you are upon it.’ His voice dipped in and out of her pain. ‘Howling gales, the wind whisking words right out of your mouth.’

  The ice and the pain melted as the baby was born, in a great flood of water that gushed out of his mother. A son. He took his first gulp of air and bellowed it out to the world.

  Although she had eschewed the services of a man-midwife, Elizabeth was not a follower of every traditional practice, and did not swaddle the babe as countless mothers before her had done. Apart from the growing body of opinion that held swaddling to be unnatural, Elizabeth’s time with the Sheppards in Essex had taught her the benefits of fresh air and loose clothing for newborns. It strengthened the bones and allowed the child to grow strong and sturdy. The Quakers believed that babies were born innocent, not in original sin. Control and restraint could come later. A well-applied rod would lead a child on the path of right
eousness if he showed signs of straying. Likewise, she did not give the baby over to a wet-nurse but suckled him herself, watching the wee infant take to the pink nipple as naturally as a newborn calf to its mother’s teat. The baby drank deeply of the milk that filled his mother’s breast, and the love in her heart beneath it.

  Elizabeth marvelled at the child, could not stop gazing at him. She examined his every detail—the miniature toenails, the creases at his wrists, the delicately etched eyebrows. His slightest movement—the flicker of an eyelid, the furrowing of his brow—made Elizabeth’s heart melt. How could such a small creature draw forth such an immense outpouring of love?

  On the first of November, Elizabeth brought the baby to St Paul’s to be christened James. A month later, his father returned.

  When James saw his son he gently laid a finger on the baby’s wide face and determined little chin. ‘Aye, that’s a Yorkshire lad,’ he commented. ‘But with his mother’s blue eyes.’

  ‘They all start blue,’ said the new mother. Elizabeth did not mind whose chin or eyes the baby had. It was enough that he was healthy.

  Elizabeth’s happiness was complete. Tears welled in her eyes as she watched James hold the baby in his arms, and she saw the look of rapture on her husband’s face as he bent to kiss his son. That first night in bed the baby slept between mother and father, each parent a curve, two halves which joined together to provide a sphere of love and protection.

  Before the end of the winter Elizabeth determined it was time for the Cooks to find a nest of their own. Mr Blackburn had been most charitable in offering them the Upper Shadwell tenement for a peppercorn rent, but she did not want to be beholden to him forever, and proper tenants would provide him and Mama with more income.

  She broached the subject one day when James was busy refining his charts and maps. While Elizabeth sat, her straight back parallel with the back of the chair, head bent over her embroidery, James, in unbuttoned waistcoat and billowing sleeves rolled up out of the way of inks and quills and instruments, moved around the table on which his work was spread out. Baby James, asleep in his new crib, a christening gift from Uncle Charles, murmured and Elizabeth looked in his direction, listening to the sounds, hoping they would stay small and not develop into full-blown cries.

  The sounds did not fold back into sleep but grew louder. Little fingers started groping the air and the tiniest frown developed on the forehead before the eyes squeezed tightly and the mouth opened into a cry.

  James heard it. His head came up from his work. Was it a scowl on his face or merely a look of concentration? Elizabeth tried rocking the crib but it did not lull the baby back to sleep. He was hungry and only one thing would fix that. She undid her laces and freed a breast, the nipple already weeping milk, and put the baby to it.

  James left his work table and came over, stopping short of the two. James stood there awkwardly, as if the mother and child had around them an aura he could not penetrate.

  He went back to his work. Although the curtains were open, the day outside was dull and dark, and he sometimes needed to hold a candlestick over the work. He replaced it in its holder on the wall directly afterwards, bringing into the house his shipboard habits of a place for everything and everything in its place. He could not afford to have wax spatter on the charts, or worse, the documents go up in flames.

  Though Elizabeth had seemed entirely absorbed in her task, she was not oblivious to the cramped conditions of their accommodation, and the difficulty it must cause her husband. If it were not such an unpleasant day outside, Elizabeth might have taken baby James to visit Mama and Mr Blackburn, but instead she decided to take him upstairs, out of his father’s way.

  She bent down to lift the crib, which was made of heavy oak.

  ‘There is no need to move him, ’ James said softly. ‘Perhaps I’ve done enough for one day.’

  But Elizabeth knew her husband. He did not do a ‘day’s work’. He carried on till the job was done, with a look of fierce concentration on his face.

  ‘I’ll take him up.’

  ‘If you are determined, my dear, let me do it,’ offered James.

  Elizabeth watched him go up the stairs, carrying the crib as lightly as if it were a basket of fruit. She let him have this moment alone with his son, and tiptoed over to the table where James’s work was laid out, taking care that her large skirts did not brush against anything.

  ‘Plan of Harbour of St John’s in Newfoundland by James Cook, 1763’. Towards the bottom left-hand corner were the cardinal points that James had filled in and shaded so that it looked like a star. Around the curve of shoreline, and looping into the harbour, were hatchings of penstrokes which, together with a gouache of pale green, denoted scrub. Elizabeth could see the faint pencil lines from one reference point to another, and the numbers in the water which measured the depth of the channel. It was very pretty work indeed. Several features were marked with letters of the alphabet and at the top of the plan was a key to the references:

  A Kings Wharfe

  B Navy Brew House

  C Six Gun Battery

  D Rosses Rock

  E Chain Rock

  F Battreys of Two Guns

  G Sigd Hill

  H Cuckolds Head

  Elizabeth wondered how H got to be named.

  When James came back down Elizabeth broached the subject of purchasing a house. She knew they could afford it because she was the one who managed the accounts, carefully noting the income and the outgoings in her ledger. They had saved quite a bit through Mr Blackburn’s generosity and Elizabeth’s own careful household management. ‘A house bigger than these two rooms,’ she said. ‘A place where you can work, with a little garden for James, and his future brothers and sisters,’ she added. ‘Not too far from Mama and Mr Blackburn,’ she said, thinking of the months when James would be away.

  A few weeks later James announced that he’d found something. ‘Remember Mr Curtis, the distiller from Wapping?’

  ‘The Curtises who removed to Mile End?’

  James nodded. ‘There is a house next door to them, newly built. Number 8 Assembly Row.’ James added to its attractions by telling Elizabeth that, yes, Assembly Row did have assembly rooms where the important families of the area gave balls and routs. ‘But that’s only during the season. Otherwise it’s quiet.’ He omitted telling her it was also the site of less frivolous but equally spirited political meetings.

  Mile End was a mile, as its name implied, from Aldgate. Though it was still the East End, it was just far enough from Wapping to be genteel. Merchant seamen went to live there when they could afford it, and with improving coach services it was not at all far from the river.

  The next day Elizabeth left baby James—Jamie they had taken to calling him—in the safekeeping of Mama, and went with James to view the house. The coach passed an impressive block of conjoined houses on Mile End Road, well-laid brick, the whole having gables adorned with model ships. ‘Ships?’ exclaimed Elizabeth. ‘Is that what decided you?’

  ‘It’s Trinity Almshouse,’ James laughed. ‘For retired seamen. I’m not yet ready to set up house in there.’

  The sweet sickly smell of gin reached Elizabeth’s nose even before they alighted from the coach, and it got stronger as they walked towards Assembly Row. By the time they got to number 8, the smell of fermenting juniper berries was so obvious that James felt he had to account for it. ‘Mr Curtis’s distillery.’

  Elizabeth hadn’t realised that in the move to Mile End, Mr Curtis had continued in the same line of business. Could she never get away from it? She was born in an alehouse, grew up, between interludes in Essex, next to one, and now James was proposing a house joined by an archway to a distillery. Still, that wasn’t the same as an alehouse. There wouldn’t be drunks congregating to menace baby Jamie. And the house itself was just what she had in mind. The same liver-coloured bricks as the grand almshouse, with two rooms up and two down, and though hardly a manor, it was double the size of the Sh
adwell tenement. It had a garden back and front, and fields behind. She was delighted. After they’d inspected the interior, they spent the rest of the day familiarising themselves with the surroundings, laughing at the names of nearby passageways such as Ducking Pond Row, Red Cow, Mutton Lane. They sounded positively rural compared to Gravel Lane, Cut Throat Lane, Rope Walk, and the rest of the streets in Shadwell.

  Though there was the cluster of buildings of Mile End Old Town, and the neighbouring houses, they did not crowd the vista. The air was not so thick as the coal-laden air of the riverside, and there were pastures and meadows and market gardens. Elizabeth found it all most pleasing. By the end of the day she barely noticed the smell of gin at all.

  So it was agreed, and in the last days of winter 1764, James Cook signed the deed by which he purchased the lease on the house.

  The plot of ground—15 feet from east to west, and 139 feet deep—lay south of the road from Whitechapel to Bow. The term of the lease was sixty-one years, long enough, God willing, to see Elizabeth and James out for the rest of their days.

  THE TELESCOPIC QUADRANT

  James loved Elizabeth’s back, a violin of creamy skin. It smelled of milk and nutmeg, and something that James could not define; it smelled of Elizabeth. At night, when the house was quiet and a square of stars appeared at the window, he would move the covers—gently, slowly—and murmur: ‘Are you cold?’

  ‘No,’ whispered Elizabeth, lifting her buttocks so that the covers fell down and she was naked before him.

  The candlelight cast shadows, bringing into relief the ridges and furrows of her back. How strange and wonderful that there was a furrow along the line of her spine. He would slowly run his finger down the accepting groove, feeling the little cotton reels of vertebrae beneath. Sometimes Elizabeth sighed under her husband’s touch and he felt the quivering of skin. ‘Does it please you?’ he asked and asked a thousand times, and she would sigh, ‘Yes, my dear, yes.’