An Appetite for Violets by Martine Bailey Page A

count those as crimes. Faultless is lifeless, was my opinion. And she was generous too, even if I did feel uneasy about that rose-red gown. Young and wilful and odd. Well, that made two of us amongst those canting codgers. Yet neither was she much like the noble folk we saw at inns, for she had slummery ways and was sometimes ill-tempered. When she let her airs drop I thought her a plain enough girl, being out to make her fortune certainly, but not at all wicked.
    Suddenly her eyes opened so I quickly turned to stare out of the window.
    ‘Dreaming of home?’ she asked.
    I nodded, for it seemed the safest way.
    ‘My true home is far away,’ she sighed, raising herself up. ‘A beautiful place in Ireland, where I was born. But when I was four, my mother died. I remember her as a delicate lady, robed in white, laying on a large canopied bed. My dear father died a year later, of the drink, at Crumlin races.’
    I kept my mouth shut, wondering why in hell’s name she was telling me all this stuff.
    Then all of a sudden she sat forward in her seat and looked at me like she could eat me alive.
    ‘Do you have a good memory, girl? Can you repeat what I just told you? It’s a little game I like to play.’
    What kind of a game was that? Only to pander to her, I had a go.
    ‘You was born in Ireland. Your lady mother is dead, now that is a sad story, for she died when you were only four. She were a beauty but delicate, like.’
    ‘And my father?’ she asked keenly, as if she did not know herself.
    ‘Why he died of the drink at the Crumlin races.’
    Just then Jesmire began to stir and wipe her hand against her dribbling mouth.
    ‘Very good,’ said my lady to herself and sat back to play with Bengo. Then the two of them began nattering, and as for me, I let myself dream awhile of Jem.
    *   *   *
    I smelt London before I saw it. It travelled on the breeze, the stink of night soil and coal smoke. As we got closer we reached a great hill and halted at the crest. Jumping down, I drank in the view so I might never forget it. Before us lay England’s great capital, spread like a hundred cities tacked together from end to end, studded with spires that pierced the sooty drifts of smoke. Here, I repeated to myself, is our Capital, the seat of the Quality and of Britain’s own King George and Queen Charlotte. I reckoned I would never see a finer sight, not in France nor Italy nor all the world.
    It was slow work getting on the London road, what with the crush of carts, wagons, carriages and horses. Above us hung a hundred signs across the fronts of the buildings: Foreign Liquors Sold Here or Tea Dealer & Grocer or Oilman, Italian Wares and Pickles. Coffee houses, tavern signs, shop signs – everywhere painted words spoke of food and drink.
    Old George had to perform miracles to squeeze our carriage between the loaded carts and street barrows jammed up against the roadside. At last we entered a broad road named the Strand and saw bookshops, mercers, mapmakers, milliners, and every kind of seller, all showing goods off behind glass windows like cabinets of treasure.
    Lady Carinna’s uncle’s house was at Devereaux Court, and was nowhere near as large as Mawton, for it was only a townhouse with everything piled up in six lofty storeys. I was ordered to the kitchen by Mr Pars, and was right sorry to see Mr Loveday disappear upstairs with Her Ladyship.
    The fug of old grease and blocked drains rising up the stairs told me all I needed to know about the kitchen. Being a man of fashion, Mr Tyrone had a man cook of course, so it gave me some satisfaction to see him suffer for it. Mr Meeks was an idling, cheating blubber-guts who took whatever he could from his master. Whenever Mr Tyrone wished to entertain, the kitchen was filled with baskets and parcels of goods all delivered from pastry cooks and taverns. All he did was primp the food with his black-rinded fingers and lay it on Mr Tyrone’s plates as if he’d cooked it all