Alexander Graham Bell: Master of Sound #7 (10 page)

“Fires?” Felix said, confused.

Johnny nodded. “I vowed that if I lived, and if I ever got me a climbing boy, I wouldn’t do
that
, no sir.”

“Okay,” Felix said slowly. He was missing something, of that he was certain. But what?

“It’s not too bad,” Amelia said to Maisie.

They were in a place called Convent Garden, an enormous place that sold every kind of food imaginable. Amelia and Maisie were there to get oranges. “We’ll sell them in the West End,” Amelia had told Maisie after breakfast. “We’ll make a few pence. You’ll see.”

But first they had to come here and buy the oranges.

“Just got to get past the costermongers,” Amelia said, weaving her way through hundreds of men buying fish to sell.

Maisie put her hand over her nose and mouth again and concentrated on staying close to Amelia, whose red hair made her easy to follow. She had freckles, too—more than Maisie had seen on any one person. Small and skinny with creases of dirt in her neck, Amelia couldn’t be more than eight or nine years old. But when Maisie had asked her how old she was, the girl had just looked surprised. “Well, I have no idea!” she’d said brightly.

At breakfast, as Maisie sat sullenly eating the disgusting oatmeal they’d slopped into her bowl, Amelia had offered to take her with her to sell oranges on the street. “Better than breaking rocks,” Amelia had added. That was when Maisie thought she saw Felix. Or at least the top of what looked like his head.
Maybe it had been a mirage
, she thought now as the sight of a stall of oranges finally came into view. It had been just a flash of hair that looked like his. Maybe she’d even seen the outline of his glasses. Or maybe she’d just imagined it.

“They like oranges in the West End,” Amelia explained to Maisie as she handed a coin to the vendor.

“Give me nice ones,” she told the vendor as he placed six oranges in her basket.

Amelia lifted one to her nose and inhaled.

“I love the smell,” she said, her eyes closed. “Wonder what they taste like.”

“They’re good,” Maisie said, hungry.

Amelia opened her eyes. “You’ve had one?”

Maisie nodded.

“Were you fancy before you entered the parish?” Amelia asked.

Maisie thought of Elm Medona and her pink pouf. She thought of the apartment on Bethune Street and all the Chinese dinners they’d eaten there.

“Yes,” she said finally and sadly. “I was.”

“Pity,” Amelia said as they began to walk through Convent Garden and back to the street.

Suddenly, the smell of fresh-baked pies greeted Maisie. She took a big, deep breath, filling her nose with the smell of apples and berries.

But as they neared the pie men, she saw a small gaggle of people standing in front of them meowing.

“Meow!” they called to the pie men. “Meow!”

“I don’t get it,” Maisie said. “Why are they doing that?”

“It’s the meat pies,” Amelia said, wrinkling her nose. “Who knows what kind of meat is inside them?
Meat is hard to come by, you know.”

“But…are there
cats
in the pies?” Maisie asked in disbelief.

Amelia shrugged. “At the parish they put the dead children inside their pies. Who knows what this lot does?”

As they walked, Amelia pointed out what all the people scurrying about were doing.

“He’s a dustman,” she said. “Collects all the ashes and such from the dustbins.”

The man was indeed covered with gray ash. It coated his hair, his clothes, his shoes. His eyes looked otherworldly peering out from all the dust around them.

“Coal porters,” Amelia said as men wheeled small wheelbarrows of coal past them.

“Match girl,” she said with obvious disgust. “Lower even than us, she is.”

A small group of boys went past, each of them hauling a cloth bag over their shoulder.

“Rat catchers,” Amelia said.

“What?” Maisie said, turning to take a look at the boys. Their bags were lumpy with…rats, she supposed, shivering.

“Here’s our spot,” Amelia said. “People come out of there”—she pointed to a brick building—“and they like a nice orange.”

But people didn’t come out. Not for a long while. Amelia didn’t seem to mind the waiting. She called hello to some of the raggedy children who passed them. Children out in the street trying to make a half penny.

Maisie found her mind wandering back to Harrington Square and Grandfather Bell’s nice warm house. She wondered how far it was from here to there. A light rain had started to fall, sending a chill through her. There would be a fire in the fireplace in the drawing room, Maisie knew. And hot tea with cake.

She took a good look at her surroundings. The police didn’t seem to bother the street children during the day. As long as they were selling something or carrying packages or even doing cartwheels in the street, they seemed to be left alone. So she could probably make it back to Harrington Square without any trouble. But what would she do when night fell again? She thought of the garden across from the square. She could hide in there,
couldn’t she? Amongst the tall hedges maybe.

Besides, she had to get back to Aleck. He was the key to getting them out of this miserable city.

Them
.

Her heart lurched at the idea of
them.
Hadley, her first real friend since they’d moved to Newport. Would she ever forgive Maisie for bringing her here and then losing her? And Rayne. Maisie didn’t even know for sure that the sisters were together. Then the image of Felix hit her, his eyes beaming at her from behind his glasses, his cowlick popping up, his…oh, just his
Felix-ness
.

Where are you, Felix?
Maisie thought.

“No way,” Felix said, staring up into the long, narrow chimney. “I can’t do it.”

“You’ve no choice, mate,” Johnny said. “Once you get inside, you’ll feel the little spots where your feet can grip. You climb all the way to the top and—”

“No!” Felix said firmly.

Johnny gave him a little shove, sending him toppling forward.

“Climb,” Johnny said evenly.

He blocked Felix’s way with his body so that
there was just chimney in front of him and Johnny behind.

Felix took a deep breath and pulled himself inside the chimney. It was black in there. Black with soot and black with darkness. He looked up, but it was too dark to know how high it went.

“Climb!” Johnny yelled.

It was narrow. Felix wedged himself between the sides and pulled his way up a little, leaving his bare feet dangling free. He paused to catch his breath and think of a way out.

But the next thing he knew, Johnny was pricking the soles of his feet with pins, over and over.

Felix screamed. But he also shimmied up further, away from Johnny.

He paused again. The light from below seemed very far away now, and the darkness above seemed vast and endless.

Again, Johnny reached up and pricked his feet with the pins, piercing little stabs of pain that sent Felix up even more.

Felix felt hot tears on his cheeks. The soot was so thick he was having trouble catching his breath. Even though he knew it was silly, he closed his eyes.
Somehow the darkness there, behind his own eyes, was less scary.

“Sweep as you go!” Johnny called up to him.

Felix’s foot found one of the small dents Johnny had told him he could use as a foothold. But when his toes moved to grip it, they slipped off, moist with sweat and blood.

Felix felt himself begin to slip.

Frantically he tried to push his shoulders against the sides of the chimney for support. His feet swung through the darkness, searching for another foothold.

But it was too late.

He was off-balance and falling.

His hands and cheeks scraped on the brick as he slid downward.

The light that had grown so far away now grew brighter and closer with increasing speed.

Felix heard his own voice making strangled, terrified sounds.

All of this happened in an instant, yet the fall seemed to go on forever.

Until finally Felix hit the bottom—hard.

He heard his glasses break.

He felt his head hit stone.

The taste of blood filled his mouth.

And then, like in cartoons he had seen, stars, pinpoints of light exploded in front of him. Then they extinguished and darkness followed. Felix felt himself slipping, slipping, slipping away.

“The sweep!” a woman in a haughty British accent shrieked. “He’s dropped from the chimney.”

Felix wanted to tell her that he wasn’t a chimney sweep at all, but he felt as if he were falling again, this time into that darkness that enveloped him.

“Whatever shall I do?” the woman asked the empty cellar.

The last words that came into Felix’s mind were
Eighteen Harrington Square
. But he couldn’t remember what they meant, or why they were important.

That darkness finally covered him completely. And Felix did not hear or feel or think anything else.

A
melia’s cheerfulness was getting on Maisie’s nerves. Didn’t the poor girl realize how bleak her life was? Maisie certainly did. They had stood on that corner all day trying to sell their measly six oranges. Most people who passed by pretended they didn’t hear Amelia calling “
Oranges! Oranges for sale!”
A few looked at them with great pitiful faces and shook their heads sadly. But so far only one man had bought an orange.

Still, Amelia smiled prettily and called out “
Oranges! Oranges for sale!”
every time someone walked by, which was all the time. Maisie wished Amelia would shut up. She wished she could be somewhere warm and dry, with Felix and the Ziff
twins.
Somewhere
, she thought sadly,
like Elm Medona.

A fancy-looking woman, in a pale blue dress with so many petticoats beneath it that her bottom half swung to and fro like a big bell, hurried down the street. She carried so many packages that Maisie could only see her hat (also blue, though a darker shade than the dress), some curly brown bangs, and eyes peeking nervously over the smallest, highest package.

Of course it had started to rain, and the mud grew muddier. The woman had an umbrella hooked over her arm, but she had too many packages to reach it.

As she neared Maisie and Amelia, who quickly called “Oranges! Oranges for sale!” as if the woman could hold one more thing, her foot slipped in the slick mud and all of her packages went flying everywhere.

Maisie started to gather them, for they had been flung quite far from the woman, who miraculously remained standing.

“Oh dear!” the woman said, and stomped her foot.

She was wearing very peculiar-looking shoes.

Maisie handed her the packages she had retrieved,
helping to stack them from largest to smallest.

“There’s one more, I’m afraid,” the woman said apologetically. “A small square one?”

Maisie glanced around. Sure enough, a small square package lay upside down in the mud. She picked it up and wiped it off on her own filthy dress before setting it on the very top of the others.

Once again, the woman disappeared behind them, except her hat and bangs and her eyes which were—Maisie saw now that she stood so close to her—unusual. One eye was blue and the other green.

“It’s these new pattens,” the woman said. “They’re slippery, which is silly since they’re for walking through the mud, aren’t they?”

Maisie surmised that
pattens
must be the peculiar things on the woman’s feet, so she nodded.

“Want to buy an orange?” Amelia asked sweetly.

“Oh, dear, no,” the woman said, not unkindly. “I have no money left at all after so much shopping.”

A pained look flashed across her eyes.

“What a thoughtless thing to say!” the woman said. “I’m so sorry! Here you are, two children out on the street and I’m complaining…”

Her voice trailed off.

“I know!” she said suddenly. “You”—and here she directed her gaze at Maisie—“will come home with me so that I can give you a half penny for your help.”

Before Maisie could answer, the woman said, “A half penny? No. I’ll give you a pence.”