Hetty has barely taken the first bite of her toast when the door opens and her mother glides in from the vestibule. Beatrice is out there? Or can Vivian walk through walls now? Perfume and chiffon trail in her wake as she crosses the room, leans to kiss the air beside her sister’s cheek, and floats towards Hetty for the same. Vivian landry Piers is a long lean woman whose crisp Jawline and firm skin belie her age. Hetty pushes her breakfast away and sets her face before rising to greet her mother. They touch cheeks, an awkward, wooden gesture, then part and stand, beholding one another. Though Vivian’s head is cocked at an engaging angle and her mouth turned up in a smile, her eyes waver between deprecation and terror. Hetty’s own mask begins to crumble. She sits and pulls herself back to the table. How long has her mother been afraid of her?
“I have to find out from others that my own daughter is in town,” Vivian says. Her voice sounds rehearsed, and an ancient heaviness settles on Hetty. Aunt Rachel makes tea excuses and disappears to the kitchen. Hetty wills her mother to sit down. Already her neck is beginning to ache with the strain of looking up.
“Your aunt tells me you’re here on wedding business.” Vivian smiles the smile that wins her seats on boards and committees throughout the city. Though too horsey-looking to be beautiful, Vivian was, according to Hetty’s father, a fine catch. When the banns had first been read in church, he likes to tell people, one proprietary hand on his wife’s arm, half the eligible young men in Halifax had gone into mourning.
Hetty mirrors Vivian’s smile, feels her mother’s veneer reshaping her own face. In order to deal with Vivian one must become Vivian.
“I took the liberty of calling Clara.” Clever Vivian. Hetty dreads to imagine how Clara has translated the incident at the village wharf. “she asked me to remind you your dress fitting is scheduled for ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”
Clever Clara.
“And I telephoned Peter to let him know you had arrived safely.” Aunt Rachel bustles into the room with tea things on a tray, which gives Hetty somewhere to look other than at her mother.
“And how is he?”
“Very well. He hopes to be able to join us in time for dinner this evening.”
“Perfect.” A smile to match, vinegar in her mouth. A glimpsed weakness in her mother’s fortifications is not sufficient basis for a coup.
“Six o’clock on the dot, then. I won’t stop for tea, Rachel dear,” she says, rising and pulling on her gloves. “I know you still have lots of preparations to make for your trip. I’ll see you both this evening.”
And she’s gone. Hetty sits for a moment, dazed by what has just transpired, by the way she has allowed her mother in two short but devastating minutes to take control. No longer a child or in her mother’s house, she pushes back her chair and rushes to the vestibule. Her mother is by the door. A pause to gather her wits and the necessary breath for protest. She raises a hand.
“Just the news that you’d arrived in town last night gave your father quite the fright, you know.” Vivian’s voice is low but penetrating, like the warning rumble of a large dog. The corners of her mouth turn up. “His heart isn’t what it used to be.” she grasps Hetty’s arm. “We were so relieved to hear everything is fine between you and Peter.”
Hetty stares at the door after her mother is gone. The woman campaigned for female suffrage, it’s a wonder she isn’t running the country. Hetty’s hands feel cold. Her father’s heart isn’t what it used to be? Because of what she, Hetty, has done to her father’s heart? Is that her mother’s unspoken message?
Unable to face Aunt Rachel’s pitying looks, her excuses for her younger sister’s behaviour, Hetty sweeps through the apartment to the spare room where she spent the night in fitful sleep and sits on the edge of the narrow bed. She’s past hunger, needs to be out walking somewhere, anywhere, to clear her head. Peter is coming to Halifax. Approximately eight hours from now he’ll be here, facing her across the dinner table, wanting answers. Hetty can feel her resolve slipping away like water. How stupid to bolt like that without even leaving a note. He would have been worried sick. And now there is her father to fret over. Did she think she could run away and everyone would just let her go? That there would be no repercussions? Yesterday Hetty had felt so driven with purpose; the impulse to rescue Esmeralda had made so much more sense. But her old life isn’t going to simply step aside so she can assume a new one. If assuming a new life is her intention. Beyond visiting the jailhouse, Hetty hasn’t the faintest idea what she intends.
She stands and checks herself in the dressing-table mirror. The woman staring back appears so much calmer than Hetty feels. She combs her hair, and then, arranging her hat to cast a shadow over her face, she steps outside and makes her way towards Barrington street.
The room is stark, the walls pale grey, the windows high and crossed with bars. The only furniture — a small table accompanied by two chairs — waits in the middle. Esmeralda is lounging against the back wall with a lemon-faced matron in sensible shoes, their heads bent together. But for the ring of keys dangling from a chain on the matron’s belt, there is little to distinguish the difference in power between the two women. Everything about Esmeralda — her posture, the defiant casualness of her men’s attire, the way her glossy hair, loosely tied at the nape of her neck, hangs over her shoulder — suggests that not an ounce of wretchedness has touched her: she might be leaning against the counter of an ice-cream parlour or the gunwale of her floating namesake, so composed, so unperturbed by her surroundings, by her probable fate, does she appear. In contrast, guilt marks Hetty’s skin like a sunburn; it fashions every halting step she takes towards the girl. Just what had she been expecting? Some poor little match girl with stringy hair and smudges under her eyes? A bruise or two? As Hetty approaches her side of the table, a smile grazes Esmeralda’s features.
“You came all this way just to see me?” she says, almost swaggering towards the centre of the room. “I’m flattered.”
Hetty returns the smile but it feels crooked and insincere, as if it’s sitting on the wrong face.
“When the police arrived at the wharf I . . .”
Esmeralda’s face hardens. “You felt responsible?”
They sit and Hetty fixes on Esmeralda’s work-roughened hand, resting on the table between them. Dirt has collected in the crevices, under her short mannish nails, and Hetty wonders if it’s been there all along, only she hasn’t noticed it until now.
“I brought some things I thought you could use,” she says. “They’re in a parcel, which I suppose they have to inspect first. Soap, and a hairbrush. And a couple of dresses.”
“How thoughtful. But I don’t know that your fancy gowns will go down too well in this place, do you?”
“They’re not mine. I bought them for you. They’re quite practical.” Plain, really. And a good deal less romantic than Esmeralda’s male regalia. Why hadn’t she purchased something bright and cheery? “I hope they fit.”
“You should have saved yourself the trouble.”
“How are you holding up?” Hetty asks one eye on the matron, all folded arms and stern expression. “Are they treating you well?”
Again the inscrutable smile. “What do you think?”
The matron paces back and forth the length of the far wall. Hetty tries rubbing some warmth into her hands and wonders what she is doing here. Wonders why she has come all this way.
“I know it was your husband who turned us in.” Stale prison air coats her skin, her tongue, her teeth. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You feel guilty. So you thought if you were kind to poor little Esmeralda, rotting away in the dungeon, you could make yourself feel better.”
“No. Yes. A little. I thought you might need —”
“Your pity? no thanks.”
“Some comfort. Some help perhaps.”
“What kind of help would that be? You have any money?”
“Money?”
“Yes. Money. Cold hard cash. It’s the only kind of help that carries weight in a place like this.”
“I don’t have money on me, I’m afraid. Well, a little, but it’s in my purse, which I had to check at the visitors’ entrance, along with your parcel. I could try and get you some. Though it might take me a day or two.”
“I don’t have a day or two.”
Are you going somewhere? But her tongue hesitates over the words.
“What about the ring?”
“The one you’re wearing. The one I gave you.”
Hetty’s face grows warm. “Oh. Yes, of course.” She twists the ring from her finger and hands it to esmeralda.
“The earrings too.”
“My earrings?”
“No, the earrings on the woman standing behind you. Of course your earrings.”
Hetty’s cold hands fumble with the clasps. The matron shifts from her perch against the wall. “Everything all right over there?”
“Don’t let her see what you’re doing,” Esmeralda hisses.
“We’re fine, thank you,” Hetty calls out, her voice tight and scared, not her own. She waits until the matron is looking elsewhere before handing over the earrings.
“I had no idea what Peter was planning. You have to believe me.” She takes a breath. “In fact I’ve left him.” she has? Her cheeks are burning.
“You won’t be needing that then.” Esmeralda taps her left hand. Her wedding ring. Hetty can taste this morning’s toast and tea in the back of her throat. But if she wants to at least appear to stand by the deClaration she has just made she can hardly argue to keep it. Esmeralda slips the jewellery inside her blouse. Will she not be searched? Hetty could have passed her a knife. How much experience did they have with female prisoners?
“You needn’t have bothered, by the way.”
“Needn’t have bothered about what?”
“Leaving Peter. When spoon gets ahold of him —“
“Spoon? I thought he was locked up with everyone else.”
“Afraid not.”
“Then where is he?” But Hetty has a sickening feeling she already knows the answer.
“Probably somewhere in or around your village.”
“Where he might get caught?” Hetty’s words sounds trapped and tinny. “I don’t understand. What does he have to gain in staying around?”
“Greed and vengeance. Qualities that make him a great asset to someone like my father, providing he’s kept under control.” Esmeralda’s eyes never waver in their feline intensity. “Spoon would be a lot smarter if he didn’t let his temper rule his actions.” She lowers her voice, forcing Hetty to lean across the table towards her. “If he can find a way of getting to the liquor we dropped on our way in, he’ll succeed no matter what.”
“And Peter?”
“If spoon’s had time to cool down he may try and make it look like an accident. Otherwise . . .” She shrugs, blinks slowly.
Peter hunted down like prey. If Hetty could will her legs to cooperate she would leave. What if it is already too late to warn him? She makes to rise from her chair when esmeralda grasps her arm.
“The charges are serious.” And there she is at last, the frightened young girl behind the bravado, the poisoned words. Hetty brushes aside the picture of spoon skulking around the village.
“I know,” she says, and covers Esmeralda’s hand with her own.
“As captain my father will hang for sure.”
The collateral damage from Hetty’s rash behaviour is colossal. Platitudes drift through her mind like dandelion seeds, but catching any of them for delivery seems pointlessly cruel.
“They could hang me too.”
“It won’t come to that.”
“Yes it will. Don’t think for a minute they’re not going to enjoy making an example out of me. Helen says they’re calling for the death penalty. They’d burn me at the stake.”
“Helen?”
Esmeralda motions with her head to the back of the room. All her vivacity has fled.
“My father will help us,” Hetty says. “He knows people.”
“You’re too kind, Hetty Douglas.” Two fat tears slide down Esmeralda’s face.
Hetty stares at her hand, covering esmeralda’s. How naked it looks without her wedding band. “Everything is going to be fine.”
“You will be there tomorrow, won’t you? At the bail hearing?”
“Of course I will.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”