Birdcage Walk (10 page)

It was as she hurried on that an idea came to her, simple as it was. She would make it her business to find out where George was going when he wasn’t with her. For all his reticence, no doubt inherited from his father, George was truthful, sometimes too much so. He’d once told her she looked ugly when she sulked, and couldn’t understand why she had gone home with her nose in the air when he’d only said what he thought. ‘Because you look so nice when you’re not scowling, when your eyes look like they’re lit up,’ he’d said, as explanation. Perhaps if she asked him straight out, when his guard was down, he would just tell her about the house, if not about the girl. Once he did, Charlotte could go and see for herself where he was spending his time, have it out with this other girl. Perhaps George and her would be alright then.

Resolved, at least for the time being, Charlotte spent the rest of the day in the vicinity of the river. She met an old friend who bought her a drink that she nursed for a couple of hours and, when she got hungry around midday, she didn’t find it too difficult to persuade a vendor to give her half a penny’s worth of free whelks dripping with vinegar-sauce. Eventually, though, it was time to head back to Annie’s. Though the fog wasn’t quite as thick as it had been, the temperature was beginning to drop.

The obscured sky was already darkening as she crossed London Wall to head up Moorgate. The stall holders of a small street market were packing up their goods, hitching their horses and preparing to leave for the day; the evening trade was always poor in a London Particular. One cart remained more intact than the rest, a young lad clumsily stacking the boxes of vegetables and fruit that hadn’t sold on his own, his father probably having repaired to the nearest snug. Around the boy was the detritus of the day’s trade, the curling, brown-frilled coats of cabbages and a dozen discarded swedes and turnips, either half-rotten or stunted. He caught Charlotte’s eye as he reached for a rolling apple.

“Give us a hand, will you, miss?” he said, grinning at her. She bent and picked up the stray fruit before throwing it towards the box from where she stood. He beamed again as it went in, knocking against the other leftover apples. As she turned on her heel, he winked amateurishly at her, as if he’d only seen it done by older men before, and despite his youth she felt a tiny spurt of pleasure in her stomach.

With the momentum of walking, her frustration with George grew and eventually overpowered the sadness that had covered her like a damp shroud all day. She felt better for it and much more herself by the time she let herself into the house. It was only when the door reluctantly swung open with its habitual creak and she glimpsed the familiar wallpaper, its roses and heather sprigs faded from pink and violet to dust and ashes, that she remembered her sister’s earlier fury about the rent money. As it was, Annie looked in unusually good spirits when Charlotte stepped inside. Ted, sitting up at the table for once, wore the slyly satisfied expression of a man forgiven undeservedly.

“Ah, there you are, Lottie,” cried Annie. “You’re back in time. Ted’s gone and got us a nice bit of mutton today so I’m boiling it up and it’ll be grand. You’ll have a plate, won’t you? You need some feeding up.” She straightened up and looked closely at her younger sister, who still hovered near the front door in her hat.

“Shut the door and come in if you’re going to, you daft thing! It’s cold out there with that fog, it’s chilled even me today and I’m always hot and bothered.”

She peered harder at Charlotte through the smoke from the range. “Lottie, you still look quite wore out,” she exclaimed. “I told you to stay in bed another day and not worry about getting work until you’re feeling more yourself. Is that where’ve you been all day, at Freeman’s?”

“They didn’t have any shifts today,” muttered Charlotte. “I’ll go again tomorrow, though. I’m alright, Annie. Just a bit cold, that’s all. The stew will do me good.”

Before she could be questioned any further, Charlotte ran upstairs to remove her high-heeled boots. She sat heavily down on the bed to loosen the laces and then lay back, wishing that she could just close her eyes and sleep, not face Annie’s concern and Ted’s surly looks. Abruptly, fresh tears of frustration rose in her eyes and spilled over, coursing down her temples and soaking into her hair. She’d never cried so much before; she really wasn’t herself. She lay where she was for as long as she dared, the smell of the cooking meat drifting up the stairs. Eventually she forced herself to get up, crossing to the washstand and splashing her face with cold water until her skin felt clean and tight. By the time she came down, her eyes were clear and her nose only slightly red.

“We’ll have a family night tonight, won’t we?” asked Annie, rubbing her sister’s arm as she took her place at the table. “Perhaps we’ll have a hand of gin rummy once I’ve got Eddie to bed, eh?” She picked up the plates and handed them to Charlotte, who smiled tremulously.

“Sounds good, Annie, thanks. And I’ll get that money to you next week, I promise.”

As she began to eat, the food filling and warming her, she felt calmer about George. She’d see him later in the week, catch him one night when he was coming back from work and make it look like an accident, as she’d done before. She wouldn’t go begging for a scrap of his affection, she thought defiantly, and she wouldn’t be knocking on his door again any time soon either. She imagined him at the pub, scanning the faces for hers and perhaps sidling up to Ted and asking after her with a red face. And if he then came calling, she’d make sure Annie sent him packing, saying she was busy with other things. At the thought of this, she felt more like her old self than she had all day, a realisation that warmed her inside quite as well as Annie’s stew.

* * *

8th February 1902

Dearest Lottie,

After writing you my first letter, I felt as though a weight had been taken off my shoulders. I hope you will forgive me for writing again, in the hope that a little more of my burden is lifted from me. It seems rich, perhaps, given how I made you suffer, but things are quite hard to bear here and so I can’t seem to help myself. I find I can’t always pass the time by drawing like I once did: I feel I have lost any gift I may have had, as well as the desire to use it. It is words alone that I will now commit to paper. I wonder if you would be glad to hear that, Lottie.

Continuing on from my first letter, I will tell you a little more about the room I must now call my own. I am alone in it, though I have made the acquaintance of the fellow in the room next to mine, a sallow-faced fellow called Samuel Jelsey who looks even worse than I feel when we are sent out into the exercise yard. My room measures about six feet by eight. The plaster on the walls has in many places come loose or fallen off altogether. On the wetter, chillier days, the bare bricks beneath shine with damp and are wet to the touch. I have learned to move my cot away from those dank walls.

A little more. In one corner, the corner my head is nearest to when I am in my bed, there is a hole that the rats crawl up through once it’s dark. I never used to mind them so much at home. Besides, I could hardly show that I was afraid in front of Cissy, could I? Now I don’t mind admitting that hearing them scratch when I can’t see them, and when there is no candle to light so I might, has every hair of my body standing on end, my heart thumping away like it might give out at any minute. Judging by his snoring, old Sam just sleeps through it, and all the other noises here, but I don’t get any rest to speak of. I can hardly remember what it’s like to put down my head and just drift off as I used to.

I never told you this, but the last time I had so much trouble getting some sleep was when I first knew you. Do you remember when you first come to your sister’s, and to Hoxton? You didn’t know it, or I hoped you didn’t, but I was forever coming up with excuses to walk past your door. Cissy knew something was up but I would rather have died than let on that I had gone so soft on a girl. I even took dad’s cages to market a few times, though I’d already had a long day at the print, just to have a chance to walk down Avebury Street. Of course, you were usually nowhere to be seen, however slow I took it, and I would be cursing my bad luck all the way to the market.

The first time we ever stepped out together, we didn’t go to the pub at all, do you remember that? It wasn’t until later on that we took to going drinking, without wondering how else we might spend our time together. It’s a shame, that, and now I’m sorry for it. But that first time we went to the Thames, didn’t we? I had hardly been there myself, odd as that seemed to you. But you knew it well, from your time living with your mother close to Wapping.

I picked you up at your house, and Annie’s face was all lit up with the excitement of her little sister going courting. You weren’t happy with her embarrassing you though, Lottie, and I remember you were scowling up at her while you fixed your hat on. You wouldn’t look me in the eye until we reached the New North Road and then it was like the sun had burnt off the dawn’s hazy clouds. All smiles you were, laughing and teasing me like we’d known each other for years. I don’t mind telling you I was relieved, I was quite frightened of you and your dark looks till then.

We weaved our way through the streets, you knowing all the quick ways, the men at their stalls on Cheapside looking at you, and we were at the river in no time. In all honesty, Lottie, I don’t recall too much about it, not beyond the sharp smell of the water, that great heaving water that seemed so strange to me, pushing through the middle of the city as if it owned the place. Later, when we remembered we’d had no food since breakfast, you nipped into a shop and bought me an eel pie for a penny before I could say it should be my treat. I never said at the time nor since, Lottie, but I can’t abide the taste and texture of eels, and never could, even in a hot pie. That day it went down easily enough, though. I was that hungry and that distracted.

I couldn’t tell you where else we went that first day or what else we saw. But I see you as if it were yesterday, threading through the streets ahead of me, leading the way like you could do it blind, the feather on your hat bobbing, and that heavy hair of yours coming loose from its pins. So while I might think of that day often, I remember only you in it. Everything else—the whole of London and its mighty river—might as well not have been there. It was like we were riding the carousel, sitting astride a pair of horses with flowing manes, the two of us held fast in time by their golden poles, the rest of the world a giddy blur.

Your ever loving,

George

A few days after her visit to the Thames, a letter came for Charlotte. It couldn’t have been more timely in bolstering her fragile ego. The weather had got even worse, a dismal rain soaking everyone in the streets below while the tobacco-stained air of the fog still clung to the tops of the gas lamps and obscured London’s smoking chimneys.

Despite her repeated promises to Annie that she would search for work, Charlotte could barely stir herself to move. Annie had given up her appointed washing day, saying nothing would dry in the damp, and for once lacked the energy to do anything much besides keep the baby fed and fussed over. Charlotte let her sister think she was still a little poorly and got an extra hour in bed as a reward.

Annie had just set about making some beef tea for Charlotte—she couldn’t be idle for long—when the post arrived. A flimsy paper advertisement for Keating’s Cough Lozenges that Annie put straight on the fire and a small, battered handwritten envelope.

“I think this is for you, Lottie.” She held it aloft and Charlotte squinted at it from across the room. Annie didn’t read but she knew the curving initial and elongated appearance of her sister’s name compared to her own. Charlotte took it and turned it over.

“It must be Joe,” she said, surprised.

After a pause, recognition flooded Annie’s face. “Oh, Joe Bruce! Do you know, for a second there I’d clean forgotten all about him. What’s he doing writing to you after all this time, then? He’s knows you’re courting George, doesn’t he?”

Charlotte remained silent. She’d almost put Joe out of her mind too. He was a soldier fighting in the Boer War and she’d told herself that putting him out of her mind was the best way, as someone dear to her who might be in danger. In truth, she knew that she’d been too wrapped up in George to think much about poor Joe Bruce.

The paper he’d written on in his spiky hand was as fragile as tissue, like a letter written many years ago, the ink faded and any moisture in the paper drawn out. Charlotte had a fleeting vision of the African sun beating down on Joe’s fair hair and the letter as he wrote it, bleaching them both. It was hard to read, the nib of the pen having pierced the gossamer paper in places, allowing the ink to spread through.

* * *

Joe had gone in early April, when an inkling of the summer to come could be felt in the breeze that remained soft late into the evenings. Charlotte had only begun courting Joe in January, but those first months after Christmas, when the warmer seasons still seemed so far off, were always those Charlotte most resented. That winter had been particularly hard, with her mother so ill and yet drinking more than ever. There was no money and the rooms they shared were bitterly cold. After so many consecutive weeks of cold, Charlotte felt her whole body clenched and brittle with it. March was milder, but so wet that her clothes never felt dry, just like the sheets she had to wash every time her mother drank so much that she soiled them. By the end of the month, she was dead, and all Charlotte felt was a kind of numb relief. If anything, soft-hearted Joe seemed more distressed about it than she did.

It seemed poor timing, then, that as soon as Charlotte had got settled at Annie’s after the funeral and the bad weather had finally relented, Joe’s call-up papers also arrived. Charlotte’s daydreams about how spring might be—the pair of them released from work before it got dark, strolling somewhere arm in arm, not braced against the elements for once—had been for nothing. Even Joe, who had been so impatient to do his bit for the new King and country against the Boers, and see some of the world into the bargain, regretted how little time he suddenly had.

On the last night before he travelled to Southampton with his regiment to catch the boat that would take him on the epic voyage south, he picked Charlotte up at six sharp. His face was scrubbed and ruddy against his freshly starched white collar. Under his arm was a parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with a narrow ribbon. He reddened further when Annie asked what it was, gleefully elbowing Charlotte in the ribs.

“Leaving present for Lottie, is it?” asked Ted. “That one don’t need spoiling any more than she already is by her sister.”

As Annie turned to frown at Ted, Charlotte grabbed her things and pulled Joe out the door after her, refusing to speak until they had rounded the corner out of sight. Joe stopped then, and handed the parcel to Charlotte.

“There’s not much point me saving this now that Ted’s given the game away,” he said ruefully. “Though I was planning on giving it to you over a drink, not on the street.”

Charlotte picked at the ribbon’s knot, not wanting to tear the packaging. “It’s ever so kind of you, Joe. I should’ve have got you something, you’re the one leaving.”

Joe shook his head, smiling down at her. “I won’t have much room for anything in my kit bag. Just a letter now and again would be nice. And that you won’t forget me in a couple of weeks. That’s all I ask.”

It was Charlotte’s turn to shake her head. “Don’t be daft, I’m not likely to forget you, am I?”

The paper had come loose to reveal a fur boa the colour of burnished chestnuts, the precise shade of Charlotte’s hair when it caught the light. She wrapped it round her neck, feeling its warmth immediately. If only she’d had it during the past few months when it was so bitter.

“I’ve never had anything so nice, Joe. Thank you so much, I’ll treasure this. Annie’ll be green over it—neither of us has ever had anything made of real fur. It must have cost you.”

Joe laughed. “It’s not polite to ask how much I paid, Lottie. Anyway, I thought you deserved it and that you’d look fine in it, so there you are. Just don’t go leaving it anywhere or letting Annie’s little one play with it, will you? I thought it’d look nice with your umbrella. You’ll look a real lady in all that get-up.”

Charlotte hoped he wouldn’t ask to see the umbrella, which she hadn’t used since the episode with Ted. It had been Joe’s Valentine’s present to her and, as on this occasion, she had been embarrassed by how much he’d evidently spent. You could hardly see the stitches on that brolly, they were so fine. Before he could mention it, she reached out to take his arm, but he resisted, his fist closed around something he’d taken out of his inside jacket pocket.

“What else you got there, then?” Charlotte asked warily as she noticed the muscle in his jaw working.

He opened his hand and there in the centre of his palm was a box covered in navy blue velvet. Charlotte clamped her hand to her mouth, partly out of surprise and partly because she was afraid she might laugh. Joe looked so solemn but so flustered at the same time. She felt ashamed of it but she had to fight the urge to check behind her to see if anyone was around, watching them there, now both red in the face. What a pair they must look, playing at love next to the gutter. All they needed now was for the barrel organ man to come along and serenade them.

“You needn’t worry, Lottie,” Joe said after a strangled laugh. “It doesn’t have to be an engagement ring if you don’t want it to be. It could be more of a promise to each other, like our bond while I’m away.”

Beneath her embarrassment, Charlotte was deeply touched by his sentiment. After all, he might be killed. It was quite possible. The war hadn’t been going well, she’d seen it in the paper Ted always left lying about for Annie to pick up. The Army had been resorting to all sorts of tricks to beat the Boers, poisoning their wells so they couldn’t drink and salting their fields so that the crops withered, the soil made useless. Despite this, Charlotte imagined Africa to be all colour and steaming heat; where the air hung heavier and reeked of spices and fire. She didn’t like to think of the soldiers so far away, especially since Joe had said he was enlisting, so she imagined the horses instead—all those omnibus horses that had been shipped out to pull the guns. How strange for them to have swapped London’s slippery, muck-encrusted cobbles for the dry packed earth of Africa.

The ring in the box was slim and light, hardly like metal at all. In the centre was a small cluster of white paste stones surrounding a tiny chip of red. Charlotte tried it on her third finger but it felt loose and she knew the metal would dent and scratch there. She moved it onto her middle finger and held her hand out to admire it, the stones winking softly under the light from a nearby gas lamp.

“There, it fits perfect on that one,” she said, standing on her tiptoes to kiss Joe’s hot cheek.

“I knew I’d get the size wrong,” he said. “It’s a garnet. I couldn’t afford a ruby, but I’ll bring something better home for you. I can easily save what I don’t send home while I’m there. Perhaps I’ll be able to get you an African diamond.”

“But I don’t want another, Joe, this will do fine for me.” She grabbed at his hand and squeezed it briefly before dropping it again.

They’d gone to the Britannia then, Joe insisting on paying the 4d for their seats and even though she’d wanted to split it after he’d already spent so much on her. Charlotte could scarcely remember the show now, her mind having wandered back to Africa and the huge, churning sea between here and there.

Afterwards, he’d walked her straight home, neither of them feeling up to the noise and jostle of the pub. At Annie’s door, Charlotte had suddenly wept, allowing Joe to bring her head to his chest and stroke her hair. He wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone for fear of sounding cruel but it thrilled him to see her so upset over his leaving; the proof of her love in the tears soaking through his shirt. He thought he would leave the salt stain unwashed and cut it out, never mind it was quite a new shirt. He could find a space in his bag for such a small piece of fabric.

The first letters Charlotte had received from Joe, which came in a flurry not long after he’d reached African shores, she had pored over carefully, deliberately drawing out the reading of them so that each one would last. When she had thoroughly read one each a few times, she would tuck it safely inside a small tin box with a lid. Using the white ribbon that had tied the package her boa had come in, she kept them bound together in a small pile, feeling like a heroine in a romance.

Her own letters to Joe were far less frequent than his, though not initially through lack of effort. She simply hated her own thoughts on paper, so stilted did they sound, and so unlike herself. The couple she did manage to send were written in a great rush with no reading back afterwards, the envelope sealed and the post-box visited before she could start deliberating—something that would result in the letter being shoved irritably into the range.

When the letters ceased, she had only been at Annie’s for a couple of months. Annie, witnessing Charlotte’s sullen expression and anxious to get her sister out from under her feet occasionally, had begun to wonder if she should encourage Lottie to step out with someone else. Knowing Charlotte’s propensity to grow silent and offended if she was too nosy, Annie trod as carefully as her nature would allow. She took the opportunity one afternoon when the two of them were talking easily in the tiny scullery at the back of the house. Charlotte was sitting on small stool, the baby asleep in her arms, while Annie peeled muddy potatoes over a bowl of water, their sharp, earthen smell filling the air.

“Heard anything from Joe lately, Lottie?” she began softly.

Charlotte’s eyes were on her sister’s hands, red and bloated like boiled hams. Gripped in one of them was a wooden-handled knife, its blade reduced to a thin sliver of metal after years of sharpening.

“You know I haven’t, Annie. You see all the post that comes here.”

“I know you must miss him, love, but I think . . . “

Charlotte interrupted her, glad to unburden her guilt on the subject. “But I don’t really miss him, Annie, that’s the thing. I thought I would and I was sorry when he went, but now it’s like he’s not real. I only knew him a few months before ma died and he was good to me about that, though he would go on, asking why I wasn’t crying.”

She fell silent for so long that Annie struggled not to fuss over her, some true instinct keeping her quiet.

“I worry that there’s something wrong with me, Ann, like I’m heartless,” Charlotte eventually said. “I wasn’t as sad as I should’ve been about ma, not like you were. And now, Joe’s only been gone five minutes and I can’t even remember what his face looks like, not really. Sometimes I can see his eyes as sharp as anything but then I try to see his whole face and I can’t. It’s like a dream, and the more I try to grab hold of the memory, the more it slips away. It’s like a cake of soap in the bath.”

Annie laughed and leaned over to pat Charlotte’s hand, soaking it in the process.

“You are a funny one, Lottie. You’re not heartless, you just show it different. Not everyone has the waterworks flowing like me. You’re a deep one, and I’ve always said it. You and Ted have got that in common.”

Charlotte shuddered at the notion that she was similar to Ted. She turned the conversation back to Joe. “It’s like he don’t exist anymore, like I did dream him. He’s so far away that he may as well not be anywhere at all. That sounds daft, I know, and he’d be so upset to hear me say it, but since his letters stopped I can’t seem to keep my mind on him. It’s like he’s faded away.”

Annie laughed again, her dark eyes shining with new excitement. “You’ve got your eye on someone new, haven’t you? I know you, Lottie Cheeseman! Out of sight, out of mind with you, ain’t it? I remember when you was only twelve and that Hadley boy was sweet on you and you were full of him, parroting what he thought about this and that. A week after his family had moved out east you could hardly remember the poor boy’s name. Come on, who is it?”

Charlotte shook her head. “Oh don’t, Annie. There isn’t anyone else and I feel too bad about Joe to even think of it. He always did make me feel guilty. When he left, when he’d bought me those things and I cried on the step, he thought I was heartbroken over his going. But I wasn’t, I was really crying because he was being so kind and I still didn’t care that much.”

Annie was barely listening now, the potato peel scything neatly off under her large hands as she worked through in her head the possible candidates for Charlotte’s affections among the local young men. Charlotte had always turned boys’ heads. She wasn’t a beauty, her chin was too sharp and men liked a bit more flesh on them, or so Annie hoped. But Lottie had a jaunty way of holding herself and walking about that always got her whistled at in the street. There was something about her eyes too, the way they turned amber on a bright day. They could make her look like she was plotting something – she was never one to look innocent, even as a child—but men seemed to like that too. Though she needed a bit of taming, no doubt. Suddenly a figure flashed across her memory.