Tracy Chevalier - Burning Bright

Now he joined Maggie at the window to look out over it.

‘Funny to see this from above,’ she said. ‘I only ever seen it from there.’ She indicated the brick wall at the far end of the garden.

‘What, you climb over?’

‘Not over – I an’t been in it. I just have a peek over the wall every now and then, to see what she’s up to. Not that there’s ever much to see. Not like in some gardens.’

‘What’s that house in the field past the wall?’ Jem indicated a large, two-storey brick house capped with three truncated towers, set alone in the middle of the field behind the gardens of the Hercules Buildings houses. A long stable ran perpendicular to the house, with a dusty yard in front.

Maggie looked surprised. ‘That’s Hercules Hall. Didn’t you know? Mr Astley lives there, him an’ his wife an’ some nieces to look after ’em. His wife’s an invalid now, though she used to ride with him. Don’t see much of her. Mr Astley keeps some of the circus horses there too – the best ones, like his white horse and John Astley’s chestnut. That’s his son. You saw him riding in Dorsetshire, didn’t you?’

‘I reckon so. It were a chestnut mare the man rode.’

‘He lives just two doors down from you, the other side o’ the Blakes. See? There’s his garden – the one with the lawn and nothin’ else.’

Hurdy-gurdy music was now drifting over from Hercules Hall, and Jem spotted a man leaning against the stables, cranking and playing a popular song. Maggie began to sing along softly:

One night as I came from the play

I met a fair maid by the way

She had rosy cheeks and a dimpled chin

And a hole to put poor Robin in!

The man played a wrong note and stopped. Maggie chuckled. ‘He’ll never get a job – Mr Astley’s got higher standards’n that.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘People’s always coming to perform for him over there, hopin’ he might take ’em on. He hardly ever does, though he’ll give ’em sixpence for tryin’.’

The hurdy-gurdy man began the song again, and Maggie hummed along, her eyes scanning the neighbouring gardens. ‘Much better view here than at the back,’ she declared.

Afterwards Jem couldn’t remember if it was the sound or the movement that first caught his attention. The sound was a soft ‘Ohh’ that still managed to carry up to the Kellaways’ window. The movement was the flash of a naked shoulder somewhere in the Blakes’ garden.

Closest to the Blakes’ house was a carefully laid out, well-dug kitchen garden partially planted, a garden fork now stuck upright in the rich soil at the end of one row. Anne Kellaway had been following its progress over the last week, watching with envy the solid, bonneted woman next door double-digging the rows and sowing seeds, as Anne Kellaway would be doing herself if she were in Dorsetshire or had any space to plant a garden here. It had never occurred to her when they decided to move to London that she might not have even a small patch of earth. However, she knew better than to ask Miss Pelham, whose garden was clearly decorative rather than functional; but she felt awkward and idle without her own garden to dig in springtime.

The back of the Blakes’ garden was untended, and filled with brambles and nettles. Midway along the garden, between the orderly and the chaotic, sat a small wooden summerhouse, set up for sitting in when the weather was mild. Its French doors were open, and it was in there that Jem saw the naked shoulder and, following that, naked backs, legs, bottoms. Horrified, he fought the temptation to step back from the window, fearing it would signal to Maggie that there was something he didn’t want her to see. Instead he pulled his eyes away and tried to direct her attention elsewhere. ‘Where’s your house, then?’

‘Bastille Row? It’s across the field – there, you can’t quite see it from here, what with Miss Pelham’s. What is that tree anyway?’

‘Laburnum. You’ll be able to tell easier in May when it flowers.’

Jem’s attempt to distract her failed, however, with the second ‘Oh’ confirming that the sound came from the same place as the movement. This time Maggie heard it and immediately located the source. Jem tried but couldn’t stop his eyes from being drawn back to the summerhouse. Maggie began to titter. ‘Lord a mercy, what a view!’

Then Jem did step back, his face on fire. ‘I’ve to help Pa,’ he muttered, turning away from the window and going over to his father, who was still working on the chair leg and hadn’t heard them.

Maggie laughed at his discomfort. She stood at the window for a few moments more, then turned away. ‘Show’s over.’ She wandered over to watch Jem’s father at the lathe, a heavy wooden frame with a half-carved leg clamped to it at chest height. A leather cord was looped around the leg, the ends attached to a treadle at his feet and a pole bent over his head. When Thomas Kellaway pumped the treadle, the cord spun the leg around and he shaved off parts of the wood.

‘Can you do that?’ Maggie asked Jem, trying now to smooth over his embarrassment, tempted though she was to tease him more.

‘Not so well as Pa,’ he replied, his face still red. ‘I practise making ’em, an’ if they be good enough he’ll use ’em.’

‘You be doing well, son,’ Thomas Kellaway murmured without looking up.

‘What do your pa make?’ Jem asked. The men back in Piddletrenthide were makers, by and large – of bread, of beer, of barley, of shoes or candles or flour.

Maggie snorted. ‘Money, if he can. This an’ that. I should find him now. That smell’s making my head ache, anyway. What’s it from?’

‘Varnish and paint for the chairs. You get used to it.’

‘I don’t plan to. Don’t worry, I’ll see myself out. Bye for now, then.’

‘Z’long.’

‘Come again!’ Maisie called out from the other room as Maggie clattered down the stairs.

Anne Kellaway tutted. ‘What will Miss Pelham think of that noise? Jem, go and see she be quiet on the way out.’

As Miss Pelham came up to her front gate, having spent a happy day visiting friends in Chelsea, she caught sight of some of the wood shavings Maisie had scattered in front of the house and frowned. At first Maisie had been dumping the shavings into Miss Pelham’s carefully pruned, O-shaped hedge in the front garden. Miss Pelham had had to set her straight on that offence. And of course it was better the shavings were in the street than on the stairs. But it would be best of all if there were no shavings at all, because no Kellaways were there to produce them. Miss Pelham had often regretted over the past week that she’d been so hard on the family who’d rented the rooms from her before the Kellaways. They’d been noisy of a night and the baby had cried constantly towards the end, but at least they didn’t track shavings everywhere. She knew too that there was a great deal of wood upstairs, as she’d watched it being carried through her hallway. There were smells as well, and thumping sometimes that Miss Pelham did not appreciate at all.

And now: who was this dark-haired rascal running out of the house with shavings shedding from the soles of her shoes? She had just the sort of sly look that made Miss Pelham clutch her bag more tightly to her chest. Then she recognised Maggie. ‘Here, girl!’ she cried. ‘What are you doing, coming out of my house? What have you been stealing?’

Before Maggie could reply, two people appeared: Jem popped out behind her, and the door to no. 13 Hercules Buildings opened and Mr Blake stepped out. Miss Pelham shrank back. Mr Blake had never been anything but civil to her – indeed, he nodded at her now – yet he made her nervous. His glassy grey eyes always made her think of a bird staring at her, waiting to peck.