Burning Bright. Tracy Chevalier
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it be quite so long. London women seemed to push the length of a ribbon or the angle of a hat just that bit further than Anne Kellaway would dare to herself.
Among the traffic walked a man with a tray of white crosses on his head, calling, ‘Hot-cross buns! Four a penny, cheap for Easter, hot-cross buns! Buy ’em now, last day till next year!’ He stopped in front of the house, just below Anne Kellaway, having found a customer. From the other direction strolled Miss Pelham, her bonnet festooned with tiny yellow ribbons. Anne Kellaway snorted, trying to mask the laugh that had begun to bubble up.
‘What is’t, Ma?’ Maisie asked, looking up from wiping the table clean.
‘Nothing. Just Miss Pelham in a silly hat.’
‘Let me see.’ Maisie came over to the window, peered down and began to giggle. ‘She looks like she’s had a pile of straw dumped on her head!’
‘Shh, Maisie, she’ll hear you,’ Anne Kellaway replied, though not very fiercely. As they watched, a grey horse pulling a peculiar two-wheeled vehicle trotted up the road, scattering bonnet-wearers and potential bun-buyers to the right and left. The cart had big wheels and peculiar dimensions, for though short and narrow, it had a high roof; on the side was a long vertical sign that proclaimed in black letters, ‘ASTLEY’S ROYAL SALOON AND NEW AMPHITHEATRE proudly announces its NEW SEASON beginning TONIGHT! Spectacular Acts to Excite and Stimulate! Doors open 5.30 p.m., prompt start 6.30 p.m.’
Anne and Maisie Kellaway gaped as the gig drew up in front of Miss Pelham’s house and a boy jumped down and said something to Miss Pelham, who frowned and pointed up at the Kellaways’ window. Anne Kellaway shrank back, but was not quick enough at pulling Maisie out of sight as well.
‘Wait, Ma, she’s beckoning to us!’ Maisie pulled Anne Kellaway forward again. ‘Look!’
Miss Pelham was still frowning – as she always did when anything to do with the Kellaways disturbed her – but she was indeed gesturing to them.
‘I’ll go down,’ Maisie declared, turning towards the door.
‘No, you won’t.’ Anne Kellaway stopped her daughter with a steely tone and a hand on her shoulder. ‘Jem, go and see what they want.’
Jem left the pot he had been scouring and raced down the stairs. Maisie and Anne watched from the window as he exchanged a few words with the boy, who then handed him something white. He stared at whatever it was he held, while the boy jumped back into the gig and the driver tapped his whip lightly on the horse’s neck and sped away up Hercules Buildings towards Westminster Bridge Road.
Jem returned a moment later, a puzzled look on his face.
‘What is’t, Jem?’ Maisie demanded. ‘Oh, what have you got?’
Jem looked down at some bits of paper in his hand. ‘Four tickets for Mr Astley’s show tonight, with his compliments.’
Thomas Kellaway looked up from the piece of beech he had been whittling.
‘We’re not going,’ Anne Kellaway declared. ‘We can’t afford it.’
‘No, no, we don’t have to pay. He’s given them to us.’
‘We don’t need his charity. We could buy our own tickets if we wanted.’
‘But you just said—’ Maisie began.
‘We’re not going.’ Anne Kellaway felt like a mouse chased by a cat from one side of a room to the other.
Jem and Maisie looked at their father. Thomas Kellaway was gazing at them all, but did not say anything. He loved his wife, and wanted her to love him back. He would not go against her.
‘Have you finished that pot, Jem?’ Anne Kellaway asked. ‘Once you do we can go for our walk.’ She turned away towards the window, her hands shaking.
Maisie and Jem exchanged glances. Jem went back to the pot.
In the two weeks they’d been in Lambeth, the Kellaways had not gone much beyond the streets immediately surrounding their house. They did not need to – all the shops and stalls they needed were on Lambeth Terrace by Lambeth Green, on Westminster Bridge Road, or on the Lower Marsh. Jem had been with his father to the timber yards by the river near Westminster Bridge; Maisie had gone with her mother to St George’s Fields to see about laying out their clothes there to dry. When Jem suggested that they go for a walk on Easter Monday across Westminster Bridge to see Westminster Abbey, all were keen. They were used to walking a great deal in the Piddle Valley, and found it strange not to be so active in Lambeth.
They set out at one o’clock, when others were eating or sleeping or at the pub. ‘How shall we go, then?’ Maisie asked Jem, knowing better than to direct the question at her parents. Anne Kellaway was clutching onto her husband’s arm as if a strong wind were about to blow her away. Thomas Kellaway was smiling as usual and gazing about him, looking like a simpleton waiting to go wherever was chosen for him.
‘Let’s take a short cut to the river and walk along it up to the bridge,’ Jem said, knowing it had fallen to him to lead them, for he was the only Kellaway who had begun to become familiar with the streets.
‘Not the short cut that girl talked of, is’t?’ Anne Kellaway said. ‘I don’t want to be going along any place called Cut-Throat Lane.’
‘Not that one, Ma,’ Jem lied, reasoning that it would take her a long time to work out that it was indeed Cut-Throat Lane. Jem had found it soon after Maggie told them about it. He knew his family would like the lane because it ran through empty fields; if you turned your back to the houses and didn’t look too far ahead to Lambeth Palace or to the warehouses by the river, you could more or less think you were in the countryside. One day Jem would find the direction he needed to walk that would take him into countryside proper. Perhaps Maggie would know the way.
For now, he led his family up past Carlisle House, a nearby mansion, to Royal Row and along it to Cut-Throat Lane. It was very quiet there, with no one in the lane; and, it being a holiday, few were out working in the vegetable gardens that dotted the field. Jem was thankful too that it was sunny and clear. So often in Lambeth the sky was not blue, even on a sunny day, but thick and yellow with smoke from coal fires, and from the breweries and manufactories for vinegar and cloth and soap that had sprung up along the river. Yesterday and today, however, those places were shut, and because it was warm, many had not lit fires. Jem gazed up into the proper deep blue he knew well from Dorsetshire, coupled with the vivid green of the roadside grass and shrubs, and found himself smiling at these colours that were so natural and yet shouted louder than any London ribbon or dress. He began to walk more slowly, at a saunter rather than the quick, nervous pace he’d adopted since coming to Lambeth. Maisie paused to pick a few primroses for a posy. Even Anne Kellaway stopped clutching her husband and swung her arms. Thomas Kellaway began to whistle Over the Hills and Far Away, a song he often hummed when he was working.
Too soon the lane made a sharp right and skirted along the edges of the gardens surrounding Lambeth Palace. When they reached the river their short idyll ended. In front of them stood a series of dilapidated warehouses, flanked by rows of workmen’s cottages. The warehouses were shut today, which added to their menacing atmosphere; normally the bustling action of the work made them more welcoming. Anne Kellaway took her husband’s arm again.
Though Jem and Thomas Kellaway had been down to the Thames to buy wood and have it cut at the timber yards, the female Kellaways had only seen it briefly when they first arrived at Astley’s Amphitheatre, and had not really taken it in. Now they had unwittingly chosen an unimpressive moment in which to get their first good look at the great London river. The tide was out, reducing the water to a thin murky ribbon running through a wide, flat channel of grey silt that reminded Anne Kellaway of an unmade bed. Granted, even in its reduced state it was twenty times bigger than the Piddle, the river that