‘You are? What instrument?’
Best to keep things simple. ‘I sing.’ The woman’s eyes were now nicely widened in admiration. Marina racked her brain for the sort of detail Ivy had given her after coming back from listening to Nelly French at the music hall. ‘My father says I can trill like . . . a nightingale in May. I take after my mother.’
Miss Smith’s eyes flashed with a blaze of interest. ‘Your mother had a good voice?’
‘Oh, yes. Her voice was quite enchanting.’ Marina tried to sound offhand. As if all the Denham women could sing like nightingales. But the young woman was observing her closely, as if she was trying to work out if Marina was speaking the truth.
She looked out at the fields, tugging her hair around her face to hide her blushes. She didn’t want to answer any more questions about her mother or her mother’s voice. Because of course her mother could not sing a note. How could she? Her mother could not talk. Her mother had been a mute. It made Marina feel ashamed when she thought of it, even though her father had explained that being unable to speak did not mean that her mother was stupid or feeble-minded. But Marina felt that her mother’s silence meant something – something that was not good. Why else would Ivy refer to the long-absent Mrs Denham as ‘that poor, dumb creature’? Why whisper that ‘the poor woman couldn’t tell us how unhappy she was’. Why add, in such sad tones, ‘but she had very speaking eyes. Like a sick animal.’
‘Perhaps you might sing for me?’ Miss Smith’s voice blew away Marina’s thoughts like a dandelion clock.
‘Oh, no.’ Marina shook her head, flustered. Did the woman suspect that she was lying? ‘I can’t sing just like that.’ She thought of how Mr Mount’s chauffeur had grumbled about the dust getting into ‘the pipes’ and had let the motor carriage engine run for a few minutes before they set off for the station. ‘The steam from the engine is not good for my vocal pipes.’ She coughed.
‘One day, perhaps.’ The woman smiled and Marina smiled back, feeling on safe ground again, but she went on, ‘I could find somewhere where the air is cool and not so dry and scratchy and your voice will enchant everyone who listens to it.’
‘Yes. I’d like that.’ Marina nodded a little too enthusiastically. ‘I’d like that very much.’
Miss Smith held out her hand and they shook on the promise.
6
The train clicked and clacked. They heard an enthusiastic roar from a carriage full of sailors. And then the men broke into a sea shanty.
‘Your father spends a lot of time at sea.’ The woman was pouring tea from a flask she had pulled from her portmanteau. She handed the cup to Marina. ‘Which must make things rather lonely for you, I think?’
‘Our house makes him feel sad. It reminds him of how life was before my mother left us.’
‘Your mother left you? Your mother – with the enchanting voice?’ The woman looked concerned. ‘Do you mean she . . . she . . . passed over?’
Marina shrugged. Passed over. Gone before. These strange ways of saying that you would never see someone again.
Miss Smith unpinned her straw hat and placed it carefully on the seat next to her. ‘How very sad for you,’ she said, quietly. ‘But you look like her.’ Miss Smith narrowed her eyes and looked very closely at Marina’s face.
‘I’ve been told that I do.’
Miss Smith was observing Marina as if she were a painting in an exhibition. ‘Because you don’t look like your father. Your eyes are such a pretty shape. And your hair is so black it has a lustre, like mother-of-pearl. Your skin looks very delicate too.’
‘I’m not sure whether I look English or not.’ Marina shifted in her seat. The skin on her foot was itching and she fought the impulse to pull down her sock and scratch it. ‘I suppose I just look like me.’
The woman smiled and nodded as if she agreed. ‘Which is quite the best way to look. Although I am shocked at how badly brought up you are. Quite the rudest young woman I have ever met.’
Marina scanned Miss Smith’s face for signs that she was joking, but the woman looked quite stern.
‘I-I don’t know what you mean?’ Had she offended the woman somehow?
‘Here you are talking to me, and not bothering to introduce yourself!’ Miss Smith’s face twitched in amusement.
‘I am Miss Marina Annabel Denham.’ Marina gushed. ‘How do you do, Miss Smith.’ Marina shook the woman’s hand.
‘Very well, as you were kind enough to ask. Although a little hot. I had to rush from the office.’
Office. Marina sighed in admiration. ‘Oh, I want a paid occupation when I grow up, but my father wants me to get married and arrange flowers and write out menus for the cook and see that the coal merchant gets paid, and a whole lot of other boring rot. I ask you!’ Marina tried out the snort of derision she had been practising on Edward all summer.
‘Urgh.’ Miss Smith shuddered. ‘In other words, he wants you to be that ghastly thing: a young lady. Which is about as appealing to a bright girl as being a plate of chopped liver. But not as useful! And no doubt your father thinks this is what will be best for you?’ Miss Smith raised one eyebrow. Marina nodded. Miss Smith flared her nostrils. Marina copied her but it made her sneeze.
‘I wonder, have you told him how you feel? Perhaps if he understood how you wish to make your own life rather than have one
