Eliza’s Daughter by Joan Aiken Page A

maybe. Or – perhaps – she has gone to try her luck in London town.’
    â€˜Are there sailors in London town too?’
    â€˜Fine gentlemen, if not sailors.’
    â€˜Why would they want soap?’
    He burst out laughing. ‘Oh, Liza, you are green! You don’t know anything! She has gone to be a whore, of course.’
    â€˜Oh well, why didn’t you say so?’ I was affronted. ‘I know all about whores.’
    â€˜Well, you shouldn’t.—What do you know about them?’
    â€˜Fanny Huskisson told me.’ (She was a girl who had lodged for seven years with Mrs Pollard at the Green Man Inn. She had left last year.) ‘She told me they lie with men for money.’ Fanny, a jolly girl, had been in some sort my friend.
    â€˜They don’t just lie with men. They fornicate.’
    â€˜I know! And in spite of that they don’t bear children, because they swallow ergot of rye. I think it is a paltry way to make a living – to have to be with men all the time.’
    I had a very poor opinion of men – except for Mr Sam and Mr Bill.
    â€˜I could tell you a great deal more than that,’ said Hob.
    â€˜Well I don’t wish to hear it.’
    As a matter of fact I could have told him a great deal more. But I did not want to do that either.

Chapter 2
    Hitherto I have recorded in detail some events of my early childhood, for they may have a bearing on what came to pass later; but I do not intend to proceed at such a leisurely pace over the following period of my life; that would be to tax the reader’s patience too highly.
    Moreover I suffer sometimes from uncertainty. Did such an event really occur, I wonder, or did I imagine it? I know that I do, from time to time, envision whole episodes as if they were stories that befell me. And I reserve the right, when I so choose, to keep my own counsel over certain occurrences.
    Triz, or Thérèse, as she was now called, soon settled contentedly enough with her own family up at Kinn Hall. Heaven knows she had not been particularly well used or had much affection bestowed on her while she was in residence with Biddy Wellcome; there were few reasons why she should object to the change. And now, among these new friends who continually talked and sang to her, asked her questions, played games with her, she rapidly learned to talk. But she continued very attached to me and would demand my company every few days. So by degrees I came to spend the greater part of my time up at the Hall, Whether, growing older, Triz had any recollection of that strange episode at the Michaelmas Fair – whether she remembered being handed over to the gypsies – I do not know; she never alluded to it. Perhaps it was sunk deep down in the mists that obstruct our recollections of infancy and early childhood. But my arrival and intervention on that occasion, whether consciously recalled or not, I believe must have played its part in her great devotion to me.
    Some mothers might have been jealous of such an attachment to a stranger in their newly restored child. But Lady Hariot was not of that kind. Her nature was just and considerate, and because of her protracted illness she had had time to think long and deeply about matters which are, by most people, accorded little attention. Anything that brought comfort or interest to her child, she welcomed; and so she welcomed me. I may say that she was like a mother to me – certainly a better mother than Biddy Wellcome had ever been to her own little Polly (who was now relegated to her grandmother’s fitful and fluctuating care; if sober, Hannah treated the child kindly enough, but her sober periods were becoming more widely spaced. Very often, these days, she was to be found incapably drunk).
    Lady Hariot, indeed, made the suggestion to me that I should come and live entirely at Kinn Hall. Nether Othery she thought to be a less than satisfactory haven for me. She even went so