Fordhook, Ealing
February 1833

It is our third lesson. I have made far more of an effort than I usually would to make sure that I am nicely dressed, hair brushed, face scrubbed. I sit in a kind of agony of anticipation, making mistakes on purpose in the hope that Mr Hopkins will lay his hand over mine in order to correct them. So far, he has not done so.

I am learning, he tells me, the Lewisian model of shorthand, pioneered by a Mr Lewis. ‘An interesting character,’ says Mr Hopkins. ‘He has a strong Cockney accent and a fondness for doggerel verses, but I am personally quite convinced that he is something of a genius. When I was studying for my final exams at university, I injured my hand quite gravely by writing too much in the wrong style. My brother had seen Mr Lewis give a lecture, and recommended that I seek his advice. Within weeks, he had corrected my posture, shown me how to wear the aidergraph, and had altered my handwriting so much that my own mother suspected my letters had been written by another. Really, Miss Byron, he saved me. That’s why I am so very passionate about teaching his method to as many young people as I can.’

For ten minutes or so, he tests me on my knowledge of the Stenographic Alphabet. I have been committed in my private study of these simple shapes and lines – so like a code, or secret language, that I find it quite enchanting – and he applauds me for my efforts. ‘Excellent, Miss Byron,’ he says. ‘I believe we are ready to begin the next chapter: The Beginnings of Long Words.’

‘I like long words,’ I say, with far more enthusiasm than I generally afford to my teachers.

‘As do I,’ says Mr Hopkins.

James Hopkins comes twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It is lesson five, and my penmanship is now much improved; I no longer require the support of the aidergraph. Mr Hopkins, as usual, is all smiles; he tells me endless anecdotes involving his university days, and the things he learned; he asks me how I am with an expression of genuine interest and concern. But nothing else has happened and I am growing positively faint with frustration.

Invited to ‘write anything I like’ by my painstaking tutor, I think for a while and then decide on a line of Catullus’; I have been reading a good deal of poetry recently with my Latin tutor, who comes on Mondays: a lean, bespectacled man with streaks of grey in his hair, who clears his throat with compulsive regularity. The line is, I realise, a risky choice. I hope – I really do hope – that it will get some kind of reaction from Mr Hopkins, for I do not think that he will fail to infer its meaning.

Da mi basia mille, dein mille altera.

There: that is as big a hint as I can possibly give. What will he make of it? His eyes are downcast, focused; he is still scrutinising – or pretending to scrutinise – my writing.

‘Would you like me to translate the line?’ I say.

‘I know the translation. Give me a thousand kisses, then a thousand more. Isn’t that right?’

‘Just so,’ I say, still watching him.

‘Hmm,’ he says. ‘The formation of some of these consonants is very good.’

‘Thank you,’ I say.

‘I don’t know if you have taken due care over this double “L”.’

‘Where?’ I say, knowing where – I felt it myself, that slight slip of the fingers as I wrote the conjoined letters; a double ‘L’ is written almost as a C-shape, and I did not do it justice. ‘Here?’ I point, disingenuously, to the wrong place in the line.

‘No, Ada.’ He laughs, moving his hand to mine. ‘Here.’

I laugh too, then stop. ‘Oh!’ I say. ‘You called me “Ada”.’

‘I apologise, Miss Byron. I should not have done that.’

‘But I liked it,’ I say.

We stare at each other. ‘I think... I believe that I did too,’ says James Hopkins.

He does not withdraw his hand. He is not quite close enough to kiss me, in his usual position just around the corner of the table, but he could move so easily, just by shifting his chair a couple of inches, and I lean my body towards him, imperceptibly, to make the prospect of so doing a simpler one. Yes: he could kiss me now, if he wanted to. Or: I could kiss him, abandoning convention altogether, embracing the kind of rare, rash action of which, perhaps, Lord Byron might have approved. A spatter of sparks from the fire brings me to my senses; of course Mr Hopkins will not kiss me now; he would not, could not do such a thing, not here, in the library, with a Fury on Duty somewhere not too far away. But even so, I can see that he is thinking about it; his lips part, perhaps without his even realising it, and his left hand drums a pattern on the table in what I am quite sure is an unconscious rhythm of desire. The room is so silent that the tick of the clock over the mantelpiece is suddenly heartbeat-loud.

And then the peace is shattered by Fury the Third, who comes bustling in to tell us that the lesson is almost over. James Hopkins moves his hand in an arrow-quick second, and by the time Fury the Third is upon us I am meekly reading aloud a marked passage from The Ready Writer.

It is a mercy, I think later, that the Furies know nothing of shorthand. If she had been able to read the line that I had written, the Fury would have been instantly alerted to my desires. As it is, she seems to have suspected nothing.

Mamma likes to visit the children at Ealing Grove as often as she can – two or three times a week, at the very least – and she is pleased, albeit mildly surprised, that I, almost as often, offer to go with her. I am particularly interested in the allotments. ‘I like your principle: education taking place outdoors, as well as in. Learning by doing,’ I tell her.

‘Quite so,’ says Mamma.

‘Besides, I might want to become a farmer one day,’ I add. Mamma ignores this.

Two young boys of perhaps twelve or thirteen are helping their teacher, a Mr Cross, to dig a drainage ditch. It’s hard work, and I wish that I could help them – it would be good for me to ask something more of my body than walking and reading, and besides, the young boys look as though they could do with assistance. Mamma ushers me on, to where a greenhouse is being constructed. She issues a volley of crisp questions at one of the gardeners; while they are engaged in conversation, I drift away to where some new fencing is being installed. In one corner, alongside the fence, sits a wooden shed. That too looks new. It seems that my mother has truly spared no expense.

A cry of pain startles me; I turn back to see that one of the boys has taken a tumble over his spade. I fly over to him in seconds, reaching him before Mr Cross does. Mamma is not far behind. I kneel down and help the boy up. ‘What is your name?’

‘Stephen, miss.’ I’m glad to see that he is warmly dressed; it’s bitterly cold at the moment, especially on these allotments, where there’s not much to block the wind.

‘Does it hurt when you move your foot, Stephen? Try to turn the ankle – gently, though.’

I support the boy’s weight as best I can while he moves his foot from side to side. ‘Does it hurt?’ I ask again.

‘No, miss. Not too badly.’

‘He’d better go indoors at once, and have it seen to,’ says Mamma. ‘I’ll go with him myself.’ She casts a dark look at the earth, as though disappointed in its failure to offer her students adequate support. ‘Ada, you stay here with Jack, and keep him company until Mr Cross and I return.’

They disappear, one on each side of the hapless Stephen (I suspect that he was in greater pain than he admitted), leaving me with the other boy, Jack. He seems unwilling to go on with his digging for the time being, and so I ask him instead about his studies, and whether he enjoys his life at the Academy. Jack, knowing perfectly well who I am, is politely enthusiastic.

‘How about the gardening work?’ I say, looking around. ‘It seems hard. Not to say dangerous.’

‘Oh, no,’ says Jack. ‘We enjoy the time outdoors, and whatever we produce is ours to sell. And it’ll be spring before long. Once the land is better prepared, we’ll be able to grow things, miss. Potatoes and parsnips. Mangel-wurzel.’

He is about to enter into a long disquisition on vegetables. Keen to avoid this if possible, I say: ‘And what of these new buildings?’

‘Well, miss, that, over there, is the greenhouse. And that’s the storage shed. Brand-new it is. Took a week of work for the carpenters and the pupils alike. It’s awfully nice inside, you know, with chairs and a table, and even a rug.’

‘I’d like to see it,’ I say, which is true: anything to get out of this cold wind. But I have other reasons, besides the cold and idle curiosity. Burning in my Ada-brain, which is always busy, like a needleworker’s hands, is the smallest seed of an idea.