A Crooked Rib Read Online Free Page A

Adelaide. I seem to have become a very nervous person.’
    I considered speaking of her infant but held back.
    ‘But, you know,’ she went on, ‘I’m getting quite callous about my husband’s leaving me. And now I have you, Fanny dearest, I’m sure to be my old self again very soon.’
    ‘But I don’t understand,’ I ventured again. ‘In Albany you were the healthiest of all of us. You never suffered a day’s illness. Do you remember how you and Uncle used to walk up the slopes of Mount Clarence and leave the rest of us far behind?’
    To my consternation, tears began to form in her eyes. ‘Ah, those were such happy days,’ she said. ‘I used to think that once I was married I should be just like Mama … I believe she was in love with dearest Papa until the day he died.’

LYME REGIS, 1832
    My bedroom, opposite Mama’s, looked out to the garden, not the sweep of Lyme Bay. Martha occupied a room on the top floor with Mama’s maid, Agnes. Joseph slept in the cellar and Ellen had a window-bed behind the shutters in the kitchen. Since William had died, it had become my habit when I could not sleep to steal out of bed and sit on the floor outside Mama’s door, leaning against the jamb. On the nights I heard her weeping, I remained on guard at her door until I fell asleep and woke, from discomfort or cold, in time to creep back into my bed before Ellen should come to rouse and dress me.
    It was Ellen’s task to accompany me to and from the school gates, carrying my lunch pail. Mr England’s Academy being the only such establishment in Lyme, and the parish requiring that we be educated, there was a mix of children to match the population of the town, some of us sent in tidy pinafores and buckled shoes, others ragged and barefoot, even in winter. The schoolroom, too, had its own ranks and hierarchies; already I knew very well that some of the others came from what Mama called ‘those squalid tenements’.
     
    ‘Ye’ve to come along wi’ I now,’ said Ellen as she collected me from school one bitter afternoon in February. Taking my hand, she sped down Church Road, forcing me to scurry to keep up with her. ‘Come on, Miss Fanny. Us must hurry.’ She jerked at my hand as we headed down the hill towards the butter market at Monmouth Street, then, suddenly, she turned off towards the George.
    ‘Are we going to the Inn?’
    ‘Nay. Us has other things to do.’
    I was disappointed. Occasionally, Martha and I walked to the stablesbehind the George to watch the farriers replacing worn shoes on the travellers’ horses and the stable-boys tossing hay. As we hurried past, the heavy stench of rotten manure wafted out.
    Ellen wrinkled her nose. ‘I niver could marry wi’ a stable boy. Allus stinking of muck and filth.’
    ‘But where are we bound, Ellen?’
    ‘Curiosity killed they cat.’
     
    We crossed the top end of Coombe Street, its tall buildings crowding the mean, narrow alleyways. These must be the tenements. I pressed even closer to Ellen, sniffing the warm thick air about us.
    ‘What’s that strange smell?’
    ‘Be aye they Maltings. Be there them brews they beer.’
    We slipped into a lane and skirted the side of the mill where a channel of water ran beside us. Opposite, three or four cottages abutted the path, and in one of them a woman was sweeping the yard with a besom.
    ‘Take care,’ said Ellen. ‘Look away now. That one be a witch. Lyme be full of witches. Does ye know how to keep they away?’
    ‘No,’ I mumbled, my eyes averted from the witch.
    ‘Ye takes a morsel of bacon and fixes it inside of they chimney, just away from they fire. Witches canna niver abide the smell of bacon.’
    At the thought of witches descending inside our chimney, I shuddered. ‘I think we should go home now.’
    ‘Her be going indoors and us be nearly there.’
    ‘Nearly where?’
    ‘Why, Jericho.’
    ‘But Jericho is in the Bible.’
    ‘Nay this one. ’Tis by they Old Mill where they Lym make a deep