Fifty-Five

Nick Brodowski returned to Juliet’s flat within a few minutes, bearing three craft knives, a paperknife, a wooden board, some sheets of blotting paper, scissors, a tube of glue and another bottle of white wine.

“We may be in for quite a long evening,” he said. “But you must tell me if you are getting too tired, and I will leave and return tomorrow.” He raised the bottle. “You will have another glass of wine?”

“Yes, but only a glass,” said Juliet. “The doctor is coming to see me tomorrow. I really don’t want to be hung over.”

She watched as Nick seated himself at the table and placed the journal on the board and opened it.

“Could you sit beside me?”

“Certainly. What do you want me to do?”

“Just hold the front cover as flat to the board as you can. Hold it down firmly with both hands.”

Juliet seated herself next to him and tried to do as he asked.

“That’s fine, but you need to place both your hands away from where the edges of the cover have been stuck down. Put that hand there, in the middle of the cover, and that one there.” He gently rearranged her hands. “I shall have to come quite close to you with the craft knife, but don’t worry, I won’t let it slip.”

Juliet watched, fascinated, as he carefully prised the paper away from the thick board of the journal, making tiny insertions with the craft knife. After an hour, he had levered up almost half of the top edge of the cover. Juliet’s fingers were aching and she had cramp in the back of her hands from holding them in the same position for so long.

“You would like a rest? Or perhaps to stop now? We can leave it for tonight if you like.”

Her whole body was screaming out for sleep, but she fought off its demands.

“I’d like to finish this today if we possibly can. It’s too exciting to want to give up on it now!”

“A rest, then. Drink some wine.”

She sat back in her chair, flexing her fingers before she picked up her glass and took a couple of sips.

Nick drained his glass and poured himself another. The alcohol seemed to have no effect on his hand-eye co-ordination.

“Ready to start again?”

She nodded. It took the best part of another hour to separate the paper from the whole of the top of the cover. They paused for another break.

“I’m sorry it is taking so long. The glue is very old and stubborn. We’re lucky that the paper is good quality. If it had been cheaper it might just have flaked into powder. Then you would certainly have told me to stop!”

Juliet laughed.

“Yes, I would! Are you ready for another go?”

He nodded. He took hold of her hands and positioned them differently so that he could start work on the side of the cover. Was it her imagination, or had he given her fingers a fleeting caress as he’d guided them into place? She saw that he’d made no further inroads into the wine. She pushed the bottle to one side.

Now their heads were bent so close together that at times they touched. The first time it happened, Juliet drew away gently. She noticed that Nick flinched and decided not to do it again. After a few more minutes, he relaxed completely, completely absorbed in the task.

“I think that this will be a little easier,” he said. “There doesn’t seem to be as much old glue here.”

He was working at it intensely now, his movements rapid and sure.

“That’s half of it,” he said, straightening up and wiping his forehead. “I think we might be able to get at the paper now. Do you want to try?”

“No, you do it,” said Juliet. “You have nimbler fingers than I do. Please be careful, though.”

“Here goes!” he grinned. “What do you bet that this will just be scrap paper that’s been used as padding?”

He pushed the loosened paper up so that it formed a kind of envelope and grasped the wad of yellow paper inside it. He was unable to extract it. A fine film of yellow appeared on his fingertips, as if he’d been collecting pollen.

“The paper inside isn’t such good quality. I’m afraid it might disintegrate if I pull too hard. It may also be stuck to the bottom of the board, or wrapped around the whole of it, on both sides.”

Juliet thought for a moment.

“Jackie Briggs doesn’t know about the yellow paper,” she said. “She won’t be upset if we damage it, whereas she might be if we damage the cover of the journal. I think we should risk putting a bit more purchase on it. At least we’ll then be able to tell whether you’re right. Then we’ll know we need to do more work to lift the covering.”

“Do you have some tweezers? And a bulldog clip?”

“Yes, I’ll fetch them.”

When she brought the tweezers, he used them to open out the envelope a little more. Carefully, he dug down to the bottom and ran the tweezers around it and the closed side. He took the bulldog clip and clamped it to the top edge of the wad, causing a small cloud of the pollen-like dust to rise into the air and fall on the board. Gritting his teeth, Nick yanked at the paper.

It slid halfway out before the bulldog clip tore off, taking with it a ten-pence piece sized fragment. Nick reattached the clip and pulled again. This time the whole of the wad emerged. The yellow paper was speckled brown in places and smelt musty, like old hymn books.

“It’s been folded over several times. Unfold it as carefully as you can, while I glue these edges down again. The sooner I do it, the less damage there’s likely to be; I’ll leave a gap for some padding refill.”

Juliet took the wad of paper from him. It seemed at first that it consisted of several sheets stuck together, but there were folds on two sides. Gradually, she managed to open it out, taking off the surface in some places but not actually tearing any holes, until she had spread out in front of her two foolscap-sized sheets of paper. Time had stuck them together, but not firmly. Juliet took one of the craft knives and gradually eased the sheets apart with it. Laying the two sheets side by side, she saw that each was a separate but almost identical document. She was looking at two printed forms, each of which had been written on sparingly in a neat hand in brown-black ink.

“Have you got something interesting there?” Nick looked up from what he was doing. “I’m glad that the pages aren’t just blank, anyway. Do they seem to have any kind of meaning?”

“I’m not sure yet,” said Juliet slowly. “Give me a few minutes to read them.”

“Sure.” He returned to his task. He had cut some blotting paper so that it formed a wad of similar size and thickness to the one that he’d removed and slid it into the envelope. Now he was easing tiny lines of glue on to the edge of the board before smoothing down the cover paper with the flat blade of the paperknife.

Juliet studied the first sheet. Some of the writing was indecipherable or worn away by age or the more recent damage inflicted by herself, but she could read enough of it to see that the document formed some kind of report.

“Louisa Jameson,” she read. “Age: thirty-three. Height: Five feet two inches. Weight: ten stones. Physical features: Strong. Good worker. Excellent teeth. Does not tire easily. Large breasts and buttocks. Neat enough for the house. Illnesses: None recorded. Slight limp. Demeanour: Pleasant. Cheerful. Obedient. Personal hygiene: adequate.” The next printed word was difficult to make out. Pediment? Parchment? The written words offered no clue: they consisted merely of a series of dates. The first one of these was 9th August 1870; the last 24th December 1894. There were about a dozen dates in the list, each one followed by the letters ‘btg’.

“That should do the trick,” said Nick. “We just need to leave a weight on that for twenty-four hours now. Are you having difficulties with that? I’m going to wash my hands. Then I’ll take a look, if that’s OK?”

“Please do,” said Juliet. She glanced at her watch. Ten minutes to midnight! She felt deathly tired now, but she was determined to see this through, get as far as she could with it.

Nick came back.

“Have you come to any conclusions yet?”

“Not exactly. It’s some kind of form. I’m convinced that it belongs to the period of the journal – late nineteenth century. It’s set out like a school report, but it reads like a cross between a doctor’s notes and the kind of stuff that’s written about models in modern celebrity magazines. It could be a kind of checklist for a servant’s reference, I suppose, but it seems less . . . respectful than that, even for the period. Almost as if it’s a prize cow that’s being described. And there’s a word that I can’t make out, with a list of dates written against it.”

“Let me see.”

She handed him the paper. He scrutinised it for a few minutes and whistled.

“Jeez!” he said. “Do you know what I think this is?”

“I’m sure you’re going to tell me!”

“I think it’s some kind of slave indenture. Unfortunately the bottom of the sheet is too damaged to read – but my guess is that the owner had signed it. Possibly signed the person concerned over to a new owner.”

“The woman’s name is European.”

“If I’m right, and she was a slave, the surname is almost certainly that of her white owner. He’ll also have given her a European first name.”

“But slavery had long been abolished in England in the late nineteenth century.”

“There’s no proof that she was a slave in England – or where she was from, for that matter.” Nick looked at Juliet curiously. “Unless there’s something else you know?”

Juliet avoided meeting his eyes. “Nothing for sure. I’ve got a few theories, but probably all too far-fetched.”

“Oh, OK. Well, let’s have a look at the other sheet.”

The second piece of paper was lying forgotten on Juliet’s knee. She handed it to him without looking at it.

“This one’s more damaged than that one,” Nick said, holding it up towards the electric light and frowning. “I can certainly make out the surname, which is also Jameson. I can’t read the first name properly, but it looks as if it might also be Louisa.”

“Is it just a copy, then?”

“No, I don’t think so. The age given here is sixteen, the height five foot five inches. And there is a date on this one: it’s January 13th 1896. Both the forms seem to have been filled in at the same time, even though we can’t see the date on the other one.”

“If there were two separate women, why would they have identical names?”

“The second one might be the daughter of the first one. But if they were slaves belonging to the same household, it wouldn’t have been unusual for them to have been called by the same name. There’d have been some way of distinguishing them in everyday life – they might have been called Little Louisa and Big Louisa, for example.”

Juliet held out her hand for the paper.

“I suppose there’s a list of her ‘qualities’, too, though it’s been rubbed out. But the word beginning with P is clearer on this one: I think it says ‘Punishment’.”

Nick stooped to peer over her shoulder.

“You’re right.”

“The list of dates is longer, but the entries cover a shorter period of time. They only start in 1889. What do you think ‘btg’ means?”

Nick paused. Juliet looked up at his face. It had contorted with the effort of trying to manage powerful emotion.

“I’m afraid that it stands for ‘beating’. I think that these women were physically chastised, perhaps for trivial offences, perhaps for some more sadistic reason.”

Juliet sat, silent, for a long time. She struggled to prevent it, but her eyes were filling with tears.

“I have over-tired you and I should know better,” said Nick gravely. “You must go to bed now. Try to forget about this until tomorrow.”

He stood up slowly and began to gather his possessions. Juliet knew that if she stood, too, he would kiss her good night. She remained seated, with the result that Nick merely brushed the hair back from her face and gave her another circumspect peck on the cheek.

“Goodnight. I will call in tomorrow evening. We may find out a little more when we look again. Promise me that you will not brood over the papers in the meantime.”

Juliet nodded.

“Good night, Nick. And thank you. I really mean it.”

As the door shut behind him, she stooped to retrieve the little mauve card from under the sofa.

Welcome home. Best wishes from Dr Wu and Dr Butler.

The card had been written in ballpoint, in the nondescript handwriting of the florist’s assistant, not Louise Butler’s precise and elegant hand. Nevertheless, Juliet was now in no doubt about who had really sent her the flowers.