The wooden leg was a handmade contraption that attached below the knee with a series of leather straps and silver buckles. It had been fashioned by one of his friends down at the docks, and in it the Captain took great pride, lavishing the limb with careful attention, polishing the buckles and waxing the straps, sanding every splinter away. Indeed, so smooth was the wood, so waxed were the straps, that on more than one occasion, the leg slipped out of place, causing great alarm to those around who weren’t familiar with his plight. He had been known to take the leg from his knee and shake it at those whose actions had displeased him.
I was not the only child whose care had fallen to Mrs Mack. Alongside her various other businesses, which were only ever discussed in low voices and veiled language, she had a small side interest taking in children. She ran an advertisement in the newspaper each week that read:
WANTED
by a respectable widow with
no young children of her own,
care of or to adopt a child of either sex.
*
The Advertiser offers a
comfortable home and a parent’s care.
Small premium; age under ten years.
*
TERMS
5s a week, or would adopt
entirely infants under three months
for the sum of ￡13.
I did not understand at first the special mention of infants under three months, but there was a girl, older than I was, who knew a little bit of everything, from whom I learned that there had been infants in the past, adopted by Mrs Mack. Lily Millington was that girl’s name and she told me of a baby boy called David, a girl called Bessie, and a set of twins whose names no one remembered any more. Sadly, though, they had all been sickly and died. This had seemed to me then like terribly bad luck, but when I said as much, Lily Millington merely raised her brows and said there wasn’t much luck about it, good or bad.
Mrs Mack explained that she had taken me in as a favour to my father, and to Jeremiah, whom it turned out she knew well; she had special plans for me and was certain that I wasn’t going to disappoint. In fact, she said, eyeing me sternly, my father had assured her that I was a good girl who would do as I’d been told and make him proud. ‘Are you a good girl?’ she’d asked. ‘Is your father right in that?’
I told her that I was.
The way it worked, she continued, was that everyone did their bit to afford their upkeep. Anything left over she would send to my father to help him with his new start.
‘And then he’ll be able to send for me?’
‘Yes,’ she agreed, with a wave of her hand. ‘Yes, yes. Then he’ll be able to send for you.’
Lily Millington laughed when I told her that Mrs Mack had special plans for me. ‘Oh, she’ll find you something to do, all right, make no mistake about that. She’s nothing if not creative and she demands her pound of flesh.’
‘And then I’m going to America with my father.’
Lily tousled my hair whenever I said that, just as my father had always done, which made me even more disposed to like her. ‘Are you, poppet?’ she said, ‘What a lark that’ll be,’ and, when she was in an especially good mood: ‘Do you think you’ll have room for me in that suitcase of yours?’
Her own father had been ‘no good’, she said, and she was better off without him. Her mother, though, had been an actress (‘That’s a fancy way of putting it,’ Mrs Mack snorted if ever she heard this claim), and when she was littler, Lily herself had been in the pageants at Christmas time. ‘Gaslight fairies, they called us. Because we glowed yellow on the front of the stage.’
I could imagine Lily as a fairy, and as an actress, which is what she planned to be. ‘An actor-manager like Eliza Vestris or Sara Lane,’ she would say as she strutted across the kitchen, chin up, arms wide. Mrs Mack, should she hear such utterances, could always be counted on to toss a damp cloth across the room and huff, ‘Best be managing those dirty dishes back into the kitchen racks, if you know what’s good for you.’
Lily Millington had a sharp tongue and a hot temper, and a knack for provoking Mrs Mack’s ire, but she was funny and clever and, in the first weeks after I woke to find myself in the rooms above the shop selling birds and cages in the Seven Dials, she was my salvation. Lily Millington made everything brighter. She made me braver. Without her I do not think I would have survived my father’s absence, for I was so used to being the clockmaker’s daughter that I did not know myself without him.
It is a strange thing, though, the human instinct for survival. I have had many opportunities whilst resident in this house, to observe first-hand the ability of people to bear the unbearable. And so it was for me. Lily Millington took me under her wing and the days passed.
It was true what Mrs Mack had said, that everyone in the house worked to earn their keep, but due to the nature of her ‘special plans’, I was granted an initial brief reprieve. ‘A little bit of time to get yourself settled,’ she said, with a pointed nod at the Captain. ‘While I get things in order.’
In the meantime I did my best to stay out of her way. For someone who took in children, Mrs Mack did not appear to like them very much, bellowing that should she find one ‘under foot’ she would not spare the strap. The days were long and there were only so many corners within the house to keep oneself hidden, and so I fell to trailing Lily Millington when she left for work each morning. She was unimpressed at first, worried that I’d get her ‘caught’, but then she sighed and said that I was as green as grass and it was just as well for someone to show me the ropes before I got myself into trouble.
The streets back then were chaotic with horse-drawn omnibuses and colourful carriages; ducks and pigs being driven to Leadenhall Market; sellers of every type of food one could imagine – sheep’s trotters, pickled periwinkles, eel pie – trumpeting their wares. Further south, were we to steal down the shadowy cobbled lanes of Covent Garden, was the market square, where costermongers lined up by the dozen to buy the best strawberries from the delivery cart, market porters carried stacked baskets loaded with fruit and vegetables on their heads, and travelling vendors wove through the thronging crowds selling birds and snakes, brooms and brushes, Bibles and ballads, penny slices of pineapple, china ornaments, ropes of onions, walking sticks and live geese.
I came to recognise the regulars, and Lily Millington made sure that they knew me. My favourite was the French magician who set up every second day on the southern corner of the market, closest to the Strand. There was a farmer’s stall behind him where the best eggs could be bought, so a constant stream of traffic bustled by and he always gathered a crowd. He caught my attention first for his elegant appearance: he was tall and thin, an effect accentuated by his black top hat and stovepipe trousers; he wore a tailcoat and vest, and his moustache tapered and curled above his dark goatee. He said little, communicating instead with his large kohl-rimmed eyes as he made coins disappear from the table in front of him only to reappear within the bonnets and scarves of people in his audience. He was able, too, to conjure wallets and items of jewellery from members of the crowd who were amazed and indignant in equal measure to discover their valuables in the hands of this exotic stranger.
‘Did you see, Lily?’ I exclaimed, the first time I observed him pull a coin from behind a child’s ear. ‘Magic!’
Lily Millington only bit into a carrot she’d procured from somewhere and told me to watch more closely next time. ‘Illusion,’ she said, flicking a long plait over one shoulder. ‘Magic’s for those that can afford it, and that’s not the likes of us.’