The Poets' Wives Read Online Free PDF Page B

and leaves our bed during the night I turn away and try to shut my ears to the graver’s scratch and score. Then one morning when I wake he’s not to be found and I assume he’s gone about his business. The light makes changing patterns on the wall opposite our bed and the room is filled with the clatter of cartwheels, the cries of someone selling fish and what sounds like the distant hammering of iron.
    The heat has finally slipped out of the summer and I am glad but never again can I bring myself to sit in the summer-house or see the vine that won’t bear fruit. I briefly walk close to the house or in the garden but the emptiness is heavy in me and it seems that nothing has come to fill the space except a sadness that sometimes feels as if it will overpower me. On this morning I stay in bed even though it’s long past the hour to rise and sometimes my hand brushes against my womb as if in search of some miracle where the lost child is returned home once more. But there is only the sense of absence and when I gently call her name it returns unanswered. So I don’t hear the footsteps on the stairs at first and when I do I realise that there’s more than one set of feet. And then he appears and he’s looking at me a little surprised that I’m still in bed.
    ‘Can you get dressed, Kate?’ he says. ‘There’s someone I want you to meet.’
    ‘Who is it?’ I whisper as I start to do as he requests but he tells me it’s best I dress and see for myself.
    I try to pin my hair but know it must look slatternly and my clothes are thrown on as best I can. I assume it will be a buyer or someone arriving to commission work, and wonder why he needs me to meet them. But when I come out of the room I see only Will until I realise that there is someone standing behind him and then I catch a glimpse of a dress and know it’s not a buyer.
    ‘This is Lizzie, Kate,’ he says, smiling at me. ‘I have engaged her as a servant until you are restored again to health.’
    I stare at the ragged girl who has emerged from his shadow. Her dress has seen better days and her shoes look as if they will fall to pieces at any moment. But her young face still bears the print of prettiness and then I see a little smear of rouge puddled in her cheeks and I remember who she is.
    ‘Greet Mrs Blake,’ he instructs her and when she mumbles her response he nods at her until she gives a little curtsey that I have to force myself to acknowledge. ‘Lizzie will live with us?. . .’
    ‘But where?’ I interrupt.
    ‘I thought the back room,’ he says, staring at me.
    ‘But I am almost restored,’ I tell him. ‘A few more weeks and I shall be my old self again.’
    ‘You need to rest, Kate. Lizzie will do the housework and go for what things we need. She can be on hand to be your help and when you are your old self again we can decide whether we shall keep her on.’
    I go to speak but I can see from his face that he will brook no further argument so I turn on my heels and walk back into the bedroom from where I hear him tell her to go and bring her things. Her light footsteps echo on the stairs even after she’s gone and then he comes to me and his voice is gentle as he says, ‘I thought it for the best.’
    ‘We should have talked about this, William. And why this girl?’
    ‘Because it is a kindness for both of you. We can give her a home, help her find a better way in her life, and I think you are in need of someone for a while at least.’
    ‘Have you forgotten all the words she shouted – her curses and her damnations on us?’
    ‘Kate,’ he says as he takes my hand, ‘that was the only world she has ever known speaking through her. She lives in squalor with older women who with the help of poverty have led her into the ways of sin. We can help her free herself from her chains and I know no one better than you to guide her out of misery.’
    ‘Can we afford another mouth to feed?’ I ask, unable in the light of his words to