“Bless you, he never lived ’ere after marrying yer mum. They met in Paris, where Mr. Steele dun banking—I figure he preferred being wheresoever she was.”
My head fell upon her burly shoulder. Agatha smelt of lye and the mutton she had been stewing, and just when I was too exhausted to contemplate getting my weakened legs under me and leaving the darkening garret, I pulled something I had never seen before from the trunk.
It was a letter—one in my mother’s elegant Parisian script with its bold downstrokes like a battle standard being planted. It read:
Rue M——,
2nd Arrondissement,
SUNDAY
Dear Mr. Sneeves,
Pardon, s’il vous plait, for my writing in haste, but I can hardly shift a muscle for the grief now oppressing me: my J—— has expired finally. The doctors could do nothing, and I am desolate. Doubtless your legal efforts upon my behalf and that of my daughter have been heroic, but in the absence of my husband, I must confirm our complete readiness for relocation to Highgate House. Si ce n’est pas indiscret, as my beloved J—— was ever a faithful client of yours, I request an immediate audience, for every second may prove invaluable. And please return this letter with your reply, as I live in horror our plans will be anticipated by those who would prevent us.
Veuillez agréer mes salutations empressées,
Mrs. Anne-Laure Steele
At first I had imagined that the letter was two pages, but it was kept together with the reply in a crabbed male English hand:
Rue du R——,
1st Arrondissement,
SUNDAY
Chère Mme. S——,
My most heartfelt condolences upon behalf of the firm. Mr. S—— was a highly valued patron of Sneeves, Swansea, and Turner. I await your arrival and assure you that the documents have already been drawn up to the late lamented Mr. S——’s satisfaction.
Humbly,
Cyrus Sneeves, Esq.
I could only understand that these documents referred to my eventual ownership of Highgate House; puzzled, I passed them to Agatha, who carefully folded both letters together again and returned them to the trunk.
“Well, that weren’t what I’d been expecting.” Agatha’s squinting eyes narrowed further.
“My mother wrote that when my father died?”
“A wise hen always sees her chicks are looked after. Now, there’s pickled ’erring and toast to be had. Your mother’s things seem to ’earten you, and this trunk will be ’ere tomorrow, and the day after that.”
Agatha was again strictly correct, but mistaken in her accidental assumption that I would be present.
“Did you ever meet my father, Agatha?” I questioned as she shut the trunk and heaved herself upright.
“Why, bless your ’eart, Miss Steele, what a question.” Agatha tsked fondly and trudged downstairs.
Infants own memories, perhaps, but by the time I was nine, hazy visions of Jonathan Steele were locked away like mementoes in a safe to which I knew not the combination. The bread crumbs I had gathered into his portrait scarce made a crust, let alone a meal.
Your father was un homme magnifique, and his eyes were the brown of sweet chocolate just as yours are, and he never stopped thinking of ways to make us safe, from my mother.
’E was as good a man as any, and no worse than some, from Agatha.
Don’t speak of him, for God’s sake, from Aunt Patience.
Now I knew he was a banker in Paris with an English solicitor friend my mother trusted; I imagined Jonathan Steele a positive hero of finance with sweeping moustaches, who had rescued my mother from penury with a flourish of his fancifully enormous pen.
“How did he meet Mamma?” I called from the top of the creaking garret stairs.
“You’ll use up all your chatter and be clean out o’ words, and then ’owever shall we pass the time, Miss Jane?” Agatha chided, beckoning.
I wondered over the unsettling notion of words running dry. My footsteps as I followed her made no more sound than the virtuous dead, fast asleep beneath their coverlets of stone.
? ? ?
Slowly, I recovered my appetite—and concurrently, my keen interest in rebellion.
My aunt Patience thought girls ought to be decorative. Indeed, Jane Eyre tucks herself away in a curtained alcove at the beginning of her saga, and thus at least attempts docility.
I was not a fictional orphan but a real one, however. Waking in the full blaze of the May afternoons, I would eat nothing save brown bread and butter for lunch, and the steaming milk soup Agatha made with sweet almonds, eggs, and cinnamon for my tea. My ugly—dare I say French—opinion of Aunt Patience kept her away temporarily, and the rest of the time I spoke low nonsense to the horses or slunk through the woods where the marsh grasses swooned into the embrace of the pond. In the stables, I could allow the stink of manure and clean sweat to calm me as I brushed my last remaining confidants; but in the forest, my musings turned darkly fantastical.
I will set fire to the main house, and then they will be sorry they made Mamma unhappy.
I will run away to Paris, where I will be awake only when the stars shine through the window and the boulevards are empty.