The Foundling Quotes
"All the babies were wrapped like presents ready to be given."
"I hadn’t known that a hospital for abandoned babies would be a palace, with a hundred glowing windows and a turning place for carriages."
"Clara was clutching my finger, which neatly slotted into her tiny palm as a lock does a key."
"I was still bleeding. Clara had been born before daylight that morning, and every part of me felt torn."
"A hush fell over the room as a man standing before the huge fireplace began to speak. His voice was as rich and thick as the carpets."
"‘There are twenty white balls,’ the man was saying, ‘five red, and ten black.’"
"‘The people in the room,’ I said. ‘Who are they?’ Without looking up he replied: ‘The governors’ wives and acquaintances. Lottery night raises funds for the hospital.’"
"‘You will put that it’s half a heart, won’t you?’ I said, watching the words spill from his quill, but not understanding them. ‘In case there’s a whole one, and they get mixed up.’"
"‘I will reclaim her, when she’s older,’ I announced, because saying it aloud made it true."
"I imagined a room piled high with tokens, and mine being thrown on a heap of them."
"My heart was wrapped in paper. I had known her hours, and all my life."
"If anyone had seen my globe of a belly at Billingsgate, they’d never mentioned it, just as they wouldn’t now as it slowly disappeared."
"‘She will be christened and renamed in due course.’ So she would be Clara to me and no one else. Not even herself."
"I sat stiff-backed, clenching and unclenching my fists."
"Sentimentality is best avoided. Good evening to you, miss, and you, sir."
"‘What if she’s dead, Kiz?’ ‘Oh, I’m certain she ain’t. They’re well cared for there, with doctors and medicine and all that. She has a better chance there than here.’"
"All her lessons and learning would go to waste – her sewing skills, if she had started, would be as useful as a butter teapot."
"It is not our position to judge circumstances. So, as long as you are prepared to take responsibility for your daughter’s needs, we are prepared to sign her guardianship over to you."
"I had hoped when I saw her I would know her at once, that we would be connected by an invisible thread, fine and strong as a spiderweb."
"Fear was rising in me, filling me like a rain bucket."
"Something terrible, beyond my worst imaginings, had happened."
"I went back to my chair and lowered myself slowly into it, feeling as though I was sinking into not just the fabric, but everything."
"I was waiting, I suppose, to get her back, so I could start a life with someone else."
"But knowing she could be anywhere instead of nowhere at all was a torture even more exquisite."
"I felt myself slowly fill up with hatred and turned away, flicking a roach off a dirty plate."
"All friends welcome," he said. "A pleasure to meet you, Miss Bright."
"So few children are reclaimed, you see – only about one in a hundred."
"In the close air of the chapel, with the smells of hair and bodies and perfume all around, sweat and musk and floral and tobacco clamouring all at once, I felt quite light-headed."
"The paper smelled old and dusty, and I traced with a finger the only part I could make sense of: the numbers six, two and seven."
"Grandfather, it would not surprise me if somebody sneezed at your funeral and you sat up in the coffin to prescribe a tonic."
"For an hour all I could think was three things in turn, over and over, around and around: Daniel was married. That was his wife. And with her was my daughter."
"The nights are shortening by two minutes a day."
"I poured three cups and stirred in sugar for Father and me; Mother had none, complaining it hurt her teeth."
"The withdrawing room overlooked Devonshire Street below and the terraced houses opposite in a mirror image."
"That was how I’d learned to read: as his eyes deteriorated, mine grew more useful."
"I imagined a strange woman coming into my house and eating my food, sleeping under my roof. Occupying my daughter."
"Life here had seduced him, and his business had grown, and after a year he had said he would rather live the rest of his days as a merchant than a marquess."
"She went straight to the looking glass and peered into it. ‘My, my.’ she spoke to her reflection. ‘Aren’t I quite the muse tonight?’"
"Charlotte slept in the chamber opposite mine, and Agnes, my maidservant, and Maria, the cook-housekeeper, were in the attic."
"Her curiosity was boundless; it filled the house, pressing at the windows and flooding the rooms, finding its way into cracks and corners, drawers and cupboards."
"The door-knocker echoed through the house, and Agnes shuffled up from the basement to answer it while I waited on the turn of the stairs, out of sight."
"The months of Ambrosia’s absence would drag, no doubt, without her weekly visits."
"I watched it from the large windows in the withdrawing room that first night, Mother and Father and me and a glass of sherry, with the lamps unlit to better see the flakes falling in the moonlight, landing softly and knitting together in their great white blanket."
"I stood for a moment, blinking stupidly like a mouse on a dinner plate, before sense took over and I moved to stand against the black iron railings of a house across the street."
"I suppose you would call it affection. I would watch couples walking down Devonshire Street arm in arm, twisting this way and that, pointing, laughing, kissing and stroking, feeling as stiff and inanimate as one of Charlotte’s dolls."
"Pressing my hands to the panels, I rested an ear to the wood and listened."
"The tender little scene disbanded and Charlotte, with her fingers on the doorknob and a last, lingering look at Eliza, like a lover off to sea, left the room."
"‘I did not see you,’ he had said, finding me heating milk at the fire. ‘You are quiet as a mouse.’"
"You are making far too much noise. I thought the wardrobe was being chopped for firewood."
"It was . . . sad. I know it’s an animal and it can’t have feelings, but as I know my own name I know that creature was lonely. It weren’t where it was meant to be."
"What I mean to say is she is already recovered a great deal. A childish fever, gone as quickly as it arrived."
"‘Eliza, who is this man?’ Her voice was weak and frightened. ‘It’s my brother, madam.’"
"‘We do not have visitors at this house,’ I said, when we were all back in the kitchen, and the door locked. I was white with fury."
"Knowing she had arrived safely, I felt a loosening – my jaw, I realized, had been clenched for a fortnight."
"The clock in the hallway distantly chimed midnight. My throat burned from the drink, and my stomach was empty."
"‘Madam,’ said Agnes. ‘We thought you was a spook.’"
"‘This and that. Time ran away with us.’ She yawned."
"I thought there might be some bread and cheese left over from supper."
"You are Mr Johnson’s girl, are you? My husband is looking after you, to carry you—"
"‘Don’t be sad,’ Eliza was saying. ‘You’re going to church with Mama, and you’ll come back and feed your budgie and your tortoise and tidy your things away, and then I’ll be back before it’s dark.’"
"‘I am’, ans-ans-answered she, ‘Miss Biddy Johnson, and I have lost my way’."
"‘Do you now regret your earlier behaviour?’ I asked."
"How was it that the love for a child was the most complex of all? How could one feel envy, grief, and rejection at the same time as simple, uncluttered affection?"
"I have no idea why they are worn at balls and the like. Surely one would prefer to know whom one was addressing."
"Care had been taken; urgency had not been at play."
"I heard him banging doors and thudding on the stairs, and felt a tiny gnawing inside my mind, a worm turning in an apple."
"Perhaps I had known since I saw the empty beds – no, before that – since Doctor Mead began pounding at the door."
"The knowledge grew and bled like ink in water, like blood."
"The way they giggled behind doors like lovers, and danced like sisters."
"‘Kiss your mother goodnight,’ Eliza had said to Charlotte."
"‘You’re all right with me, girls, long as you stay close."
"What good was paper, with a world outside?"
"You ain’t scared of the dark, are you, girl?"
"Sleep did not come that night, but guilt and fear nestled either side of me and rested their heads on my pillow."
"I could not imagine how she would react: with white, silent astonishment or violent rage."
"‘Are you really my mother?’ she whispered. ‘Yes,’ I whispered back."
"‘We,’ I said, pulling up her drawers, ‘are going to find Uncle Ned, to get our money back."
"‘If Mama could see you now,’ I said, at a loss for anything else."
"Nobody tells Bess Bright what to do, eh? Well, I’m looking after you. Sounds like you ain’t used to it."
"Speak French," I hissed urgently. "Tell me the garden story, now, quick!"
"They can’t hang you for taking back your own child!"
"I knew how quickly opinions were formed of newcomers, and how solidly they set in their moulds."
"The landscape of my life had been rubbed away and painted over anew."
"I listened to all of this in my nightgown, feeling as though my head was stuffed with wool."
"I’d hoped for an immediate reply, and did not get one."
"I suppose, I thought you might find me weak."
"But children are brought up by women who are not their mothers all over London, all over the country."
"I wish she had been honest, but of course she had to hoodwink me."
"I have more of a claim to her. I am not the whore who abandoned her at some pox-ridden baby farm."
"Don’t cry. You are home now. What’s there to cry about?"
"I never wanted to be a mother. I was given a child by Fate, not by God."
"I cannot say I have been a good parent. But I think... I think she is ready to leave."
"I looked at her now, standing between Ambrosia and Doctor Mead in the doorway, and we smiled at one another in the way that people do who have been through something very significant, and come out the other side."