“Frogs?” said Mrs. Poole. “That’s ungodly, that is.”
“Why would anyone want to bring a dead frog back to life?” said Diana. “I’m still hungry. Are we done yet?”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” said Mary. “Diana, this is important. Go back to the beginning. And I really mean the beginning. Tell me everything you know.”
DIANA: Why do I have to write this part of the story? You’re the author. Write it yourself, like you’re writing everything else, and then say I wrote it. Isn’t that what authors do?
CATHERINE: Because this is what we agreed on. You would each write your individual stories, and I would make them sound right. I would fit them into the whole, so they made sense.
DIANA: Well, why do I have to go first? Let Mary go first.
CATHERINE: Because the whole story is Mary’s story. She doesn’t need to write a separate section. But you do, so sit down at that desk and write. And don’t get up every five minutes to argue with me. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll finish.
DIANA: Don’t expect me to do all the he said she said, and those fancy descriptions.
CATHERINE: Write it however you want to. But start writing!
“My mother was the long-lost queen of Bohemia. When she was a baby, she was stolen out of her cradle by a priest in league with her wicked uncle, who was attempting to usurp the throne. He had become regent after his brother’s untimely and suspicious death. He thought that with the rightful although infantine ruler out of the way, he could crown himself king. The priest spirited her out of the castle by night, and then his confederates, who were also priests because we know that all priests are liars, carried her over the border into whatever country borders Bohemia. Where is Bohemia, anyway? They traveled by carriage and ship, eventually arriving in England, where they sold her to a poor family. . . .”
CATHERINE: Diana, if you don’t start over again and tell the truth, I’m going to bite you.
DIANA: I’d like to see you try!
MARY: Do you really want to tempt her? This is Catherine we’re talking about.
CATHERINE: And write the way you speak. That sounds like one of your horrible penny dreadfuls.
DIANA: Oh, all right. Though they’re no worse than the books you write. Ouch! All right, you didn’t need to do that.
“My mum never told me much about herself, although she always said she was a Londoner through and through, born with the sound of the ships going up and down the Thames in her ears. That was her lullaby, she said. She would have been a kitchen maid, most likely, if she hadn’t fallen in with a soldier when she was fifteen. It was a mistake, the greatest mistake of her life, she told me. ‘But I’ve never regretted it, sweetheart,’ she would say. ‘No, I’ve never regretted my Bonny Joe.’ That’s what they called him in the regiment. He was a Scotsman, from Glasgow, and as handsome, she said, as the day was long.
“Well, there she was, fifteen and with child, and her father cast her out of the house, telling her to go sleep under the bridges with the other whores, where she belonged. And go sleep under the bridges she did, until she lost the child, from hunger and illness. It was a boy, and I always wondered, when I was sent to sit on a stool or had my hands rapped at St. Mary Magdalen, what my life would have been like if I’d had an older brother. But she was young and pretty, with a saucy tongue and long red hair from her Irish mother, so one of the houses by the docks took her in and paid her regular. And that was where she met my father, Edward Hyde.”
DIANA: Now don’t you tell me I sound like a penny dreadful, because it’s the literal truth!
“Tell us everything you remember,” said Mary, leaning forward.
“It’s a sordid enough tale,” said Mrs. Poole, but she too leaned forward eagerly to hear it.
MRS. POOLE: I did no such thing.
DIANA: If she interrupts me, I don’t care who bites me. I’m stopping right here.
MARY: Mrs. Poole, could you please—
MRS. POOLE: Oh, I’ll go. I have no desire to read anything Diana writes about me. You are incorrigible, my girl.
DIANA: Of course I am. And the sooner you realize it, the better!
“It was run by a Mrs. Barstowe, and it was described in the Gentleman’s Guide to London as a superior place, catering principally to doctors, lawyers, and politicians. Barstowe’s had a reputation—it wouldn’t service men in trade, no matter how much money they had to spend. The girls were clean and could talk about the latest news—Mrs. Barstowe made them read The Times, The Financial Times, and Punch.
“My father took a particular fancy to Mum—at first he tried a few of the other girls, but then he started asking for her regular. Maybe it was because he liked it rough and she didn’t mind—she said he never hurt her. And he was ugly as sin, but she didn’t mind that either. No man had meant anything to her since Bonny Joe left with his regiment. She had told Joe about the child, and he had told her that he had a wife and three children already, back in Glasgow, with another on the way. ‘I can’t do anything for you, my love,’ he told her, ‘but give you my blessing.’ And still she loved him and only spoke well of him to her dying day. Love is a fool’s game, I think.
“One day, Hyde said to her that he wanted a child, and if she had a child for him, he would take it and support it. Well, she didn’t want that, although he offered her a lot of money. She had her living to get, and she was done with trusting men’s promises.”
CATHERINE: She told you all this when you were just a child?
DIANA: She told me when she got sick, before they sent her to the hospital. I think she knew she wasn’t coming back. “Sweetheart,” she said, “I ain’t been the best mum to you, but this is a hard world, and I want you to know what people are like—men especially. They will lie to you as easy as blowing dandelion clocks, and that’s the best of them.” She told me so I would know, and she was right.
BEATRICE: She told you because she loved you. I wish I could remember my mother, but she died when I was so young.
CATHERINE: Could we not dwell on the subject of mothers, please?