Who, Stuart? God, no. He hasn’t got a sense of taste any more than the Pygmies have a navy.
“Then I went to live with my father. From the day I entered his house, I never knew another moment of hunger. And never much cared for food again.”
“Never?” She couldn’t help her question, out of professional curiosity.
“Not once. The last time I had something good was the day my mother took me to my father. We got off at the village. She went into the general merchandiser’s and bought me a farthing of boiled sweet. I ate it all on the walk to my father’s estate—it was like sucking on God’s thumb.
“A few weeks later I went back to the same shop and bought a whole penny of the same thing. It was cloying, horrible—it tasted of anise. I couldn’t believe it. It had been so wonderful before.”
He shrugged. Something struck her in the chest, a blow, an arrow, a pain as lovely as a boiled sweet to a hungry child.
“I’m sure I sound ridiculous,” he said.
“When I was seventeen, I was at the end of my rope,” she said, her voice very distant, as if another person altogether was speaking, from miles away. “I had no money, no prospects, and no family, except a baby I loved desperately.
“One day, when he was four months old, I decided that I would take my baby to the zoo, because every child should have a trip to the zoo. And then I would take him to an orphanage and drown myself in the Thames.”
She’d never spoken to anyone else of that day, of her most desperate hour. Mostly she tried to shut away the memory—her escape had been too near, too much a thing of blind chance.
“I took him to every exhibit. He smiled and smiled, then he fell asleep. With my last bit of coin, I bought some treacle rock, determined to leave this world on a sweet note.
“It was the most awful thing I’d ever tasted. I started to cry outside the reptile house. I couldn’t face the thought of losing my baby. Or killing myself. Or becoming a common prostitute.”
The memory was all too clear now. The cold stone at her back. The taste in her mouth, as if she’d been chewing tar. Michael’s soft warmness against her chest. The blurred feet of the passersby. The children’s whispers. The governesses’ stern admonitions against staring—Come along. Nothing to see here—reducing her life’s tragedy to little more than a minor blight on the landscape. The bobby’s gruff voice, telling her to take her moaning elsewhere. And then, the voice of the girl, clear and cool as the water of an oasis. Leave her be, the girl said.
“A girl came to me. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen years old. She took off her necklace—it was a gold-and-pearl necklace—and gave it to me.”
Verity’s amazement had not dimmed with the passing years—the weight of the necklace in her bare palm, the warmth it still retained of the girl’s skin, the strong squeeze of the girl’s gloved hand. She’d reminded Verity not to sell the necklace for less than ten pounds. Then she’d left, rejoining a disapproving-looking woman standing some distance away.
The necklace, Verity sold for ten pounds twelve shillings two pence. The money bought her time to think, time to get over her shame and squeamishness about work, time to locate Monsieur David and ask for his help. It bought the uniforms she needed to enter service and the beautiful baby clothes she’d sent along with Michael when Monsieur David found a good family for him on the estate where he’d last worked.
“The next morning, after I’d come out of the pawnshop, I bought a whole shilling’s worth of treacle rock to give to the children in the tenement house. There was a tiny bit of it left at the end and I put it into my mouth without thinking. It was the most marvelous thing I’d ever had. It tasted…” How did one describe the taste of a simple piece of confection that had been imbued with all the giddiness, incredulity, and gratitude that had made her soles elevate a little off the curb? “It tasted like hope.”
A smile slowly spread over his face, a smile of astonishing warmth for a man of his coolness. As if he, too, tasted hope. Her heart fluttered anew.
“I like your story,” he said softly. “What happened to your baby?”
“He was adopted by wonderful people, but I still see him every day.”
She’d worked hard to become expert enough to cook for the master of Fairleigh Park. And it had been worth it. On the fine May day she first set foot in Fairleigh Park, Michael had been running outside the gamekeeper’s cottage, a sturdy, beautiful child of three-and-a-half, enthusiastically dragging a half-torn kite through his adoptive mother’s much-abused flower bed. He’d stopped when he saw Verity watching him, and then, just as she’d hoped and been afraid to let herself hope, he’d come running toward her and hurled himself into her arms.
Three years had passed since she’d kissed him good-bye, weeping uncontrollably. He didn’t remember her name, or anything else about her. But he’d known instantly that she loved him.