Anticipation by Tanya Moir

Author:Tanya Moir [Tanya Moir]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781775532026
Publisher: Random House New Zealand
Published: 2013-08-29T04:00:00+00:00

Back in November of 1832, my great-aunt Babs is also concerned at the passage of time. In her case, however, it’s the calendar, not the clock, that is proving irksome.

Two months after the death of Anthony Boucher, Babs is late, and not fashionably so. Grossly, criminally, unforgivably late. As a scientist, she can hardly avoid the knowledge that her body is in a regrettable condition.

What does she do now? I’m guessing, like Maggie before me, I admit. But surely Babs’ craniometric survey of East London can be put to good use? Surely she knows, already, the name of the very woman to whom she can turn?

So I give you a Mrs Brawn (why not?), living not in the rookeries, with a cesspit handy to her yard, but at an admirable house in the Poultry, at which Babs is not in the least ashamed to call. They haven’t met before. But Mrs Brawn’s reputation precedes her. In a certain sector of Whitechapel — the music hall girls, in the main — her various skills are held in high esteem.

Mrs Brawn, it is said, can fix anything. And it’s true. In Babs’ case, all that’s required is stoicism, a stiff maternity corset and a week or two at Mrs Brawn’s cousin’s country home in Kent.

When the time comes, I’d like to imagine Babs travelling down as Jones, not so much for secrecy as comfort. The other passengers on the Dover mail wondering, behind their newspapers, how a man so young could have attained the girth of an honourable member past sixty. But my great-aunt is in no condition to climb down any fig tree. She would have no choice but to make the journey south as herself, more or less, white and faint and confined, jolting towards deliverance one pothole at a time.

How could she not be glad to be rid of it, this millstone crushing her insides?

And yet she won’t let go of it entirely.

She has a pet name for her trouble. Rook. (It’s the name Babs will write on the cast she makes of a foundling boy’s skull, though for all but a month of his seven years he’s been christened Edgar. Little Edgar, my anchoring fact. He’ll pop up in the strangest of places.)

They’re picky about whose babies they let into the Foundling Hospital these days. There’s an embarrassing interview to endure, an application procedure. But a respectable governess, seduced against her will, is always a hit with the board, and the actress hired by Mrs Brawn makes the petition prettily and well.

Babs does have some part in the process. She sends the token to pin to little Rook’s gown. In return, she receives a registration ticket. Two means of knowing him, if she chooses, all the years of his life. A number too long to remember, and a brooch containing a lock of Anthony Boucher’s hair.

She doesn’t need either, as it turns out.

She knows him instantly. Among a yard full of children on visiting day, she can spot

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