Someone to Hold

Oh dear, and she needed to learn it all too. She had been terrified and astonished at the market this morning. She had learned on her feet, only one step ahead of the children—in more ways than one. Tomorrow . . . Oh, she dreaded to think of tomorrow. Just look at all this mess. Perhaps she would not even come back tomorrow. Perhaps she would remain at Grandmama’s for the rest of her natural life, buried beneath the covers of her bed.

But it was a thought unworthy of her new self. She squared her shoulders and strode over to the art side of the room to stand gazing at one of the paintings. This was where Paul Hubbard had been sitting. Paul’s dream house, it seemed, was a purple onion overlooking a stormy lake with slate-gray water and whitecaps—it made Camille shiver. The landscape about it was bleak and gray, though the windows of the onion were bright with color and light and—surely—warmth. How had he created that impression? There was a strange sun or moon hanging in the black sky. Or was it a sun or moon? It was a colored orb, startlingly different from the landscape below, just as the windows and presumably the interior of the onion house were. It was . . . Was it by any chance meant to be Earth? Wherever were the onion and the stormy lake, then? She was frowning over the rather surreal painting and its meaning when the door opened abruptly behind her.

Mr. Cunningham had come back, clutching a bulging paper bag in one hand. Camille found herself wishing she had spent her time doing something about her hair and despised herself for thinking of her appearance before all else. He looked windblown and out of breath and . . . virile. What a horrid, shocking word. Where had that thought come from?

He held the bag aloft. “For your shop,” he said. “I would suggest a ha’penny each but not three for a penny or fifteen for sixpence. I would limit each shopper to one item. Give them a brief lesson on scarcity and on supply and demand and anything else that seems appropriate. Nutrition, perhaps. If one shopper were to buy the lot, he—or she—would probably be spending the afternoon groaning in Nurse’s room and being dosed with the unspeakable concoction she keeps on hand for stomach ailments.”

Camille eyed the bag suspiciously, walked toward him, and took it. It contained brightly colored boiled sweets, one each for the children, she guessed.

“Who paid for these?” she asked. She could not have sounded less gracious if she had tried.

He grinned at her—and of course he had perfect teeth, which happened also to be white. Oh goodness, she thought crossly, she was going to have to revise her opinion of him and admit that Abby had been right in thinking him handsome.

“I swear they were not pinched,” he said, raising his right hand, palm out, as though taking an oath. “A constable will not come bursting in here in the next couple of minutes to haul me off to jail and you too for being in possession of stolen goods.”

“Every child will of course use one precious ha’penny to buy one of these tomorrow,” she said, still cross. “How am I to teach them that the little money they have ought to be spent upon necessities?”

“Beads and ribbons and shoe leather?” He raised his eyebrows.

“Beans and carrots and beef,” she said. “You are not the only one who teaches them to use their imagination, Mr. Cunningham.”

“But how dull a life it would be,” he said, “if there were never the occasional luxury or treat or extravagance.”

“That is easy for you to say,” she said. “You are a fashionable portrait painter, I have heard. You probably have pots of money and come from a moneyed background.” Despite his shabby appearance. She had heard all about eccentric artists. “As do I. But I at least am trying to behave responsibly toward these children, who have nothing, not even, in many cases, an identity.”

She turned rather jerkily to make space for the sweets on the desktops and found a square of paper upon which to write the price as well as the information that shoppers were limited to the purchase of one item apiece. She thought he had gone away until he spoke again and she realized that he was perched on one corner of the teacher’s desk close by, one booted foot braced on the floor while the other swung idly. His arms were crossed over his chest.

“This was my home,” he said quietly, “and the people here are my family. I grew up here, Miss Westcott, after being dropped off as a baby like so much unwanted rubbish. I have a name, which may or may not be my father’s or my mother’s. I had a decent upbringing here and never lacked for the necessities of life or for companionship and even affection. I was supported until I was fifteen by an anonymous benefactor, as most of the children here are. I left then, after employment and accommodation had been found for me. I also went to art school, since my benefactor was generous enough to pay the fees. The door here was not locked against me. Quite the contrary, in fact. But to all intents and purposes I was on my own to make my own way in life—with the full knowledge that though I will always call this place my home and the people here my family, in reality I am without home or family.

“We orphans, Miss Westcott, know all about necessities and the fine line between surviving and starving. We are not likely to spend the little money we can earn upon nothing but ribbons and beads and sweets. But we know too the value, the necessity of the occasional treat. We know that life is not all or always gray, that there is color too. And we know that we are as much entitled to some color in our lives as the wealthiest of the more privileged elements of society. We are people. Persons.”