CHAPTER SIX

The Anglo-Zulu War Market

That day it had taken Hadley an uncharacteristically long time to decide what to wear and how to do her hair. It was her first client consultation, and she was determined to be seen as capable. Before his death, George had always been the one to visit clients while she had only helped to create and assemble the finished products. In the morning, she awoke early and chose a dark blue walking-dress with a flattened bustle and a top that resembled a man’s suit jacket. To complete the mildly masculine ensemble, she added a matching silk tie and top hat. As she took the long steam-coach ride out of London and into the country, she reread the letter from her potential customer. All she could surmise was that Sir William Harbuckle had been a high ranking officer in the Anglo-Zulu War and had lost his left leg in Africa. From what she knew of the war, she assumed it had been removed due to gangrene after becoming infected. Her mind filtered through the information she had on how injuries were treated in field hospitals and surmised that his leg would probably not end neatly at the knee or hip as an army doctor would amputate at the easiest point, which could make fitting a prosthesis more difficult. Then again, it could give her more flesh to anchor it to. No matter what, she would make something that worked. Sitting back with her eyes closed, she hoped the plaster she packed into her carpet bag was enough. She had so much to remember: the steps needed to make a cast, the script she had written about their prostheses, and all the dos and don’ts from the etiquette book she had perused the previous night. If everything went well, maybe she could keep the Fenice Brothers alive.

The steamer stopped at a large, Tudor-style home atop a hill that overlooked a picturesque old abbey village surrounded by rolling hills of green dotted with wild flowers. The driver helped her out before she walked purposefully but gracefully to the front door, clutching her carpet bag of supplies. With one pull of the bell, the butler appeared, solemnly towering over her.

“Welcome to Courtington House, madam. Lady Harbuckle is expecting you,” the butler said flatly as he led Hadley into the parlor and took her calling card on a small, silver serving tray before disappearing down the hall.

Standing in the parlor, she scoped out the objects in the room, hoping to discern something more about her potential patrons. She had not been in many manor houses herself, but their customers had to be wealthy enough to afford a prosthesis that was not only aesthetically pleasing but functional. What Hadley saw in the Harbuckle’s parlor was merely simulated wealth. The room was littered with so many pieces of furniture, trinkets, and swathes of draped fabric that it was hard to move around without bumping into or catching an elbow on something. Wealthy people do not need to display all they own in one room, she thought between silent rehearsals of her speech on prosthetic lower limbs as she stood before the hearth. The clicking of heels marching down the hall awoke Hadley from her musings. Lady Harbuckle was only a few years older than Miss Fenice, yet she had prematurely aged into a matronly crone by being married off to a much older man. Her face was bloated and swollen, especially compared to her pinched, corseted waist that ballooned into a broad, bustled bottom.

“From your letter, I was not expecting you until at least next week,” Lady Harbuckle greeted sourly as she scrutinized Hadley, running over her face but lingered on her torso as if she was a cow up for auction. “Please take a seat, Miss…?”

“Fenice.”

She offhandedly waved her thick wrist as the women sat across from each other. “Let us discuss the terms of your employment. What subjects do you intend to teach Billy and Juliet? They are six and nine respectively.”

“I beg your pardon, Lady Harbuckle, but I do believe there has been a misunderstanding. I am not a governess,” Hadley respectfully interjected, shaking her head.

Lady Harbuckle squinted her bead-like eyes. “If you are not the governess, then what business do you have here?”

“I am a representative of Fenice Brothers Prosthetics. Lord Harbuckle expressed an interest in having us create a new limb for him, and in the last letter he sent us,” she explained as she fished through her carpet bag for the letter, “he agreed on this date for a consultation.”

“But you are not a brother.”

“I am well aware of my sex, Lady Harbuckle, but I am a Fenice all the same. Is Lord Harbuckle at home or shall I come back at another time?”

The lady of the house pursed her lips until they nearly disappeared before snapping her fingers for the butler. “Jacobs, fetch Lord Harbuckle.”

After several minutes of incredibly uncomfortable silence, a heavy-set man efficiently hobbled in using a thick, wooden cane that matched his peg leg. Hadley sprung to her feet and greeted Lord Harbuckle with a curtsey, but no introduction was made. He eyed her suspiciously before sitting near his wife, a safe distance from the woman with the tenacious blue eyes.

***

The front door flew open, sending a rush of cold air across Adam’s desk. His papers fluttered and the latest order for porcelain dolls nearly floated into the fireplace. He looked up just in time to see a red and blue blur stomp past his office door and toss a carpet bag onto the bench in the hall. With a slam, she locked herself into the workshop. Adam flinched, not only at the sound but at the thought of how angry his sister must have been to be able to make it to the workshop without ranting about what happened. From his experience, silence was the scariest sound. He waited near the door until he heard her moving around on the other side. As he inched open the door, he watched as two cowboy automatons walked ten miniature paces before spinning around and shooting at each other. The moment the gunslingers snapped back into position, Hadley pushed the button again, sending the cowboys into a slightly different routine where the damsel they were dueling over shoots one of the men. This diorama of a town from the American West, complete with cowboys and chorus girls, was a prototype of the automatons she created and sold to wealthy patrons for their children or merely for a source of party entertainment. Hadley’s eyes stayed fixed on the toy guns that never fired but still knocked over the opponent as she replayed the staged scene over and over.

“Something wrong, Had?” Adam asked, ready to dodge in case a tool came flying at his head.

“We did not get the sale,” she grumbled into her palms as she rested her chin on her hands, “and I am pretty sure the Harbuckles are going right to our competitors.”

He shrugged, he didn’t like the Harbuckles anyway. “There will be new customers. Your automatons and toys are bringing in enough money that you can wait for prosthesis orders. I received three big orders from different toy stores, and if we get them filled, we will easily have enough money to live off even if we do not get any new orders for three months.”

She finally took her eyes off the automatons and let them rest on the handsome dandy in the doorway. “I am so tired of making toys for spoiled, rich brats. Young ones and old ones. I like making prosthetic limbs. I like making something that actually improves someone’s life. These toys are beautiful, but they do not help anyone. You can say they bring a smile to a child’s face, but for how long? A leg or arm will improve their lives forever, but a toy is only meaningful until they get another one.”

“So what drove them away? I guess it was not the price if they are going to our competitors.”

Hadley sighed, tinkering with the damsel’s dress and hair before she continued. “The whole consultation started out on the wrong foot. Lady Harbuckle thought I was the governess she was interviewing, and God help that governess because I was not even offered a cup of tea or a morsel of food after traveling over two hours for nothing.” She waved her hand dismissively. “Anyway, I think they I assumed I was the wife of the craftsman, so when I said I needed to take measurements and possibly make a plaster cast, they both got this horror-stricken look. Then, he asked if I could send the craftsman to do it instead. Of course, I had to tell them that I was the craftsman. Well that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. After that, I was told that they would be calling on Lester McDonald to make the prosthesis. Then, they promptly turned me out of doors and sent me on my merry way. Now those rude people are going to tell all their rich friends not to buy prostheses from us. We have probably lost the entire Zulu War market!”

Adam chuckled despite the dirty look from his sister, his pencil mustache wiggling in time. “They may have money, but they have no sway over the upper class. Most of our clients would not even invite those horrid people to a party. If they had any class, they would have let you finish the consultation without the casting or made their servants do it for you, and if they still felt it improper, you would have received a letter cancelling the project. They would not have made such an awful fuss like that. You know, you could have had me come with you.”

“You cannot even make a cast, and you would have complained all day about having plaster under your nails.”

He stared down at his pristine fingers before glancing at his sister’s chapped and cracked cuticles. “Why not bring on a male apprentice?”

“I do not think many fathers want their sons training under a woman.”

“The poor are not exactly picky.”

“I cannot take advantage like that. I will think about finding a helper though, at least for these situations.” She pushed back her stool and elbowed past her twin. “Give me a moment to change my clothes, and I will start working on the new orders.”

Adam gently squeezed his twin’s shoulder as she left the room and mounted the steps to her bedroom. She slipped out of the outfit she had so painstakingly selected to ensure society saw her as she saw herself: moral, chic, and professional. Somehow in her dust-stained trousers she felt more like herself. Without any skirts to encumber her, she trotted down to the office to grab the invoices before locking herself back in the workshop. She stared down at the order slips. Most were automata for children ordered by their titled parents from all over England and even an order from a rich American, but mixed in were toy store orders for fairly simple, porcelain ball-jointed dolls. Despite the intricate artistry of the automata and the sum they fetched, she much preferred the simple toys that nearly every family could afford.

As she readied the kiln and quietly filled the molds, she wondered why she was allowed to design toys but not prostheses. The toy company was her own brand, Hadley’s Hobbies and Novelties, but no one seemed to care that a woman painted and dressed dolls. She loaded the first round of casts into the kiln before drifting into thought. She wasn’t even allowed to act as if it was her own company. At deals with stores or in arranging large orders, Adam had to pretend it was his to get them to even consider working with her. It all belonged to her, yet it was never truly hers. With a sigh, Hadley finally became resigned to the idea that one day she would be passed from her brother’s care to a husband who may not be as liberal, never letting her have a chance at true independence. It would all be his then. Anything she had would be stripped from her: her property, her name, her identity. It would all be his.

No wonder I can make toys, I am just a child to them. I am a pretty child who whiles away the hours sewing and painting, and who knows children better than those whose sole purpose is to make children and raise them. The thought of dashing all the molds to the floor came into her mind but instantly disappeared as she thought of George. He had taught her how to make molds and sculpt as well as craft the complex mechanisms that made her toys so desirable. She couldn’t bring herself to destroy something they had worked so hard on over something she knew she could not change.

As she dipped her muddy hands into the wash basin, she suddenly snapped out of her daze. Staring back at her from the water was a younger George. There were his dark blue eyes and freckled cheeks. She scrutinized the face and realized it was merely her own, covered in powder from the molds. With her hair pulled back and dulled by dust, her features appeared less delicate, and when she tightened her jaw, it looked square like George’s did when he was healthy. Abandoning the basin, she rushed to the sheet of glass that lay amongst her supplies. Standing over it, she locked eyes with the figure staring back at her with serious brows.

We can do this, he seemed to say as Hadley ran her eyes over his face and clothes. Looking around her work room at the needles, fabric, and boning laying on the table that used to be his workstation, she realized she had all she needed to build what society wanted.