Captured Shadows (4 page)

Mr Everett was back.

The dread in my stomach that next afternoon was an immense, creeping sort of terror that seemed to boil inside me until my hands trembled like an old man with palsy and I could barely bring myself to turn the door-knob. Once I was inside the building I felt strange and stupid, as though I didn't belong. I wondered whether I should be there at all, whether Mr Everett would come out of his office at the sound of the bell and look at me aghast that I was foolish enough not to have assumed for myself that I'd been sacked after what happened – I presumed that was the reason why Archie was nowhere to be seen.

I busied myself with a cloth just for something to do while I waited for Mr Everett and his verdict and sentence, polishing yesterday's greasy fingerprints from the surface of the counter until it shone as smooth as glass, but naturally that only reminded me of Archie: his face in the looking-glass, flushed and laughing, and the way I had watched the reflection of my fingers tightening around his bound waist in that corset when he had whirled round on his toes to kiss me. I had spent the night sleepless and sick with fear but I still didn't, couldn't, regret what had happened; it was like opening a door I hadn't realised was locked and finding a hell as beautiful as paradise.

Footsteps in the corridor startled me out of my thoughts and that terrible fear rushed through me again at Mr Everett's blank, impassive face when he came through the door. He had always been so kind to me; his wife and my mother were dear friends from childhood and he had given me a job and lodgings when I was a boy and my parents died leaving me nothing, later trusting me enough to invite me into this strange and secret world he inhabited, to ask for my discreet assistance with something so forbidden and private. I knew, though, that what he had seen between me and Archie was different, and words of desperation stumbled from my mouth before he could say anything because I couldn't bear the sudden certainty that he was about to tell me to leave, or worse.

"Mr Everett, I'm... please allow me to apologise for what you saw yesterday. I can promise you faithfully it won't ever happen again, I... we didn't expect you back, you see, and... it was an awful momentary madness which we both deeply regret."

"You both regret, eh?" he interrupted, raising his bushy grey eyebrows and staring at me hard until I felt the blood rise in my cheeks and looked down at my hands to avoid him. "Have you and Wilkes spoken since last night?"

"Well... no, sir. But—"

"Where is he?"

"I'm afraid I don't know, sir. I expect he assumes he's no longer welcome here."

"And no such thought ever crossed your own mind, eh?"

I could feel my heart thudding painfully within my chest, sick and more afraid than I had ever felt before. "Yes, sir, of course it did, but... I felt I owed you an apology for... for what happened."

"Hrm." I could feel his eyes on me still and forced myself to look up, to meet his steady, steely gaze. "Have we any appointments this afternoon?"

"Not yet, sir, not until three."

"Come to my office." There was a gilt-lettered sign hanging on a peg in the middle of the glass in the door, and Mr Everett turned it to the CLOSED side before waving his hand impatiently at me, gesturing for me to go ahead. My palms felt damp and sticky with perspiration as I passed through the doorway and into the back corridor that led to Mr Everett's office and I wanted to blot them surreptitiously on my trousers but not with him walking behind me, watching me.

When we were in the office, seated either side of the great oak desk at which he did his accounts, Mr Everett steepled his fingers in front of his face and continued to stare at me for what felt like an age. I shifted in my chair, miserable and frightened with my damp fingers still curled against my palms, feeling like a prisoner in the dock –
which you might yet be
, a horrid little alarmist voice murmured inside my head, making me sink my teeth into my tongue in some desperate attempt to stop myself from trembling in front of him.

He spoke suddenly, and it surprised me; I had convinced myself I was in more trouble for this than I would be for a murder, but Mr Everett's voice held some unexpected level of compassion instead of anger. "Jim, I'm in no position to preach on morality."

"Sir?"

"You know as well as I the pandemonium it would bring about if the public and the authorities knew the extent of the work we do here. It's a risk I've always been willing to take for the money it brings me." Here he leaned forward, his face graver than ever. "I want you to think carefully about risks and returns. Do
not
endanger yourself and my business on a throwaway infatuation with that boy – on
an awful momentary madness
. If you must dally with him, be cautious. Be discreet. Tell nobody, not Donald or Sally or anybody. Rumours matter little to people who cannot sink any lower, but rumours whispered in the wrong ears could ruin you."

All words seemed to have left my brain; I was too surprised even to feel fear any more. "Don't you mind?"

That actually made him laugh, an unpleasant sort of sound that held little humour but, incredibly, a strange sort of fondness like somebody laughing at his amusing pet dog. "Of course I
mind
, lad, it's unnatural! But since the house I live in and Mrs Everett's diamonds were paid for by unnatural acts of every kind, I see little point in making a fuss about yours in particular."

I started to say something, some baffled reply or some kind of defensive untruth, but no words would come and I closed my mouth. Mr Everett was sitting back in his chair again, regarding me with a strange, shrewd look in his eye.

Then from between the pages of the ledger on his desk he slid a photograph.

"I noticed there was still a plate in the camera after you left," he said, as I took the photograph from him with unsteady hands. It was Archie, not blurred as badly as I had expected, standing in his frills and corset in front of a painted backdrop of a country garden. There was something lovely about it, a natural, unposed sort of contrast to the severe portraits and obscene couplings we usually captured on our plates. His eyes were downcast and his head bowed slightly, turning his chin to a point and his cheekbones to broad blades beneath the tumble of hair that fell across his raised brows. The camera had frozen him halfway through a movement so his arms were raised at his sides like a ballet dancer, and his waist bound in the dark corset looked as narrow as an hourglass against the painted flowers behind him.

"Why did you...?"

"Curiosity." Mr Everett smiled then, although not in a very pleasant way. "And hope, of a sort."

"Sir?"

"What do you know of Mr Whitlock?"

A supercilious, rude old man who usually had morsels of food caught in his whiskers, although he was so rich and self-important that nobody ever dared to tell him. Of course, I couldn't tell Mr Everett what I really thought.

"I hardly know him, sir. I've taken his portrait twice, I believe, him and his nephew."

At that Mr Everett barked out a sharp laugh and said, "Come, now. That lad is no more Whitlock's nephew than Wilkes is yours. John Percival is a pampered little catamite who sells his arse for fancy suits."

I remained silent, staring fixedly at a point on the desk as I tried to calm my flaming face, but Mr Everett leaned in as well, and, alarmed with the lingering sense that he might suddenly decide to be angry, I flew back to sit straight in my chair.

"Oh," was all I could think of to say. Fumbling for something more suitable and coming up with nothing, my idiotic mouth decided to say indignantly, "Archie would never sell his arse for a suit," then I snapped it closed and covered it with my hand for good measure, wanting to cry with mortification. Mr Everett, however, was laughing suddenly, that huge roaring theatre sound of his that filled the room like thunder, and he leaned back in his chair wiping his eyes with his handkerchief.

"He might sell it for a pretty silk frock though, eh?" he said, and found himself amusing enough to start laughing again while I sat there in humiliated silence and willed my heart to stop beating in my chest and end all this torture. "Do take that chagrined puppy look off your face, Jim. This needn't mean the end of the world, you know." As he made the effort to calm himself I finally met his eyes, and found there a cunning gleam that made me feel extremely uneasy.

"It certainly feels like it, sir, if you don't mind m
y
speaking plainly."

"My dear boy. If you're willing, it could be the beginning."

Mr Everett had offered to take me part of the way in his carriage and I declined, craving the walk and the silence that evening so I might make some sense of my thoughts, but they buzzed around my head like trapped flies all the way to Lambeth and even before I reached the bridge I was angry with myself for not accepting. The evening was chilly and the breeze found its way beneath my upturned collar as I crossed the river, following the muddled map a cabbie had drawn for me with a stub of pencil on the back of a playbill. The district was more noisy than where I lived in Bloomsbury, busy with horses and carriages and people walking and children calling to each other as they played hopscotch on the pavements, and the narrow streets and multitude of houses seemed to trap the dingy yellowish fog low down so that everybody who walked through it appeared jaundiced.

When I turned the last corner into Dolland Street I slowed my pace so much that I nearly stopped walking altogether, as though a warning hand had caught me by the collar to drag me away from the madness of what I was about to do; but after coming all this way, to turn back when I was already on Archie's street, mere yards away from him, was impossible.

The house was easy to pick out from its neighbours, one of only three on the street with shop fronts; 'Joseph Wilkes, Boot & Shoe Repair' was painted on the sign above the window, and I could see more painted signs in the windowpanes and displays of lasts and brushes. Archie had told me his father was a cobbler, that he would have become the same had he not met Mr Everett, how glad he was that he wouldn't have to do it now he had taken the job with us, and a dreadful sort of guilt began to settle in my stomach as I imagined his dismay at coming back to work he hated so.

I could see a light in the window, and as I neared the shop I saw a figure moving inside. I thought for a moment it might be Archie, until the man noticed me standing on the step and came over to open the front door. He was taller and broader than Archie, with a dark beard and eyeglasses; yet there was something so instantly familiar about his face, the green of his eyes and the shape of his jaw, that it almost felt as though we had already met.

"I beg your pardon, sir, we're closed."

"Oh, no, I didn't want... are you Mr Wilkes?"

"I am."

"I'm James Sinnett, I work with Archie. Might I have a word with him?"

Mr Wilkes stood aside to allow me through the door, which he locked behind us, then led me on through the shop and into the back rooms. He spoke as we walked, saying, "Archie's walking his sister to their grandmother's, Mr Sinnett, but if you don't mind waiting he shan't be long."

I heard the chattering of children before I saw them, misjudging how many of them there would be from the amount of noise they were making; but the house never seemed rowdy, somehow, despite its small size and the way there never seemed to be quite enough chairs for everybody in it. As an only child I was forever fascinated by the way the Wilkes siblings behaved together, playing and talking all over each other in a cacophony of words and laughter, as though they all shared their own particular language that outsiders such as I would never be able to fluently speak. Mrs Wilkes was sitting on the rug by the fire brushing a little girl's hair while the girl told a meandering story to three slightly grubby dolls packed into a toy crib, but she was doing it by touch alone, focusing her gaze instead on a pair of boys who were trying to do handstands against the wall, bumping their stockinged feet against it so the picture-frames and the plates in the dresser rattled alarmingly. Mrs Wilkes was admonishing them to be careful but laughing at the same time, bright-eyed and lovely with her hair coming loose from its pins around her face. To the other side of her a baby slept on the edge of the rug, back to back with a dreaming mongrel whose legs were twitching as though it dreamt of chasing rabbits, and another girl of about fourteen years or so was sitting in an armchair sewing some words on a bit of linen with brightly-coloured silks, her hair tied up to curl in dozens of rags and the tip of her tongue peeking from the corner of her mouth in concentration.

One by one they noticed me and stopped what they were doing, apart from the baby and the dog who slept on obliviously. Mrs Wilkes got to her feet at once, still laughing breathlessly but pressing her hand to her chest as though embarrassed to have been caught unawares.

"You've brought us company, dear, and here's all the little ones ready for bed."

The littlest girl, the one with the dolls, went over to her father and lifted her arms to him to be picked up. He nestled her close against his chest and she watched me curiously over his shoulder with her dark eyes peeping through her hair. "This is Mr Sinnett," Mr Wilkes said, "he's Archie's pal from the photographer's," and Mrs Wilkes' smile broadened into one that reminded me so much of her eldest son that I felt myself begin to flush.

"How wonderful to meet you at last. Now we can all judge you and see if you stand up to Archie's tall tales of the magnificent Mr Sinnett."

I dreaded to think of what tall tales she meant, but the teasing amusement and open kindness in her eyes made me warm to her at once and I let her take my hat and show me to a chair. At once the children crowded round, the two boys and the little girl after Mr Wilkes put her down, and I tried to remember their names from the stories Archie had told me over the months we had known each other.

"Which is Robert and which is Thomas?"

They looked at each other and back at me, wrinkling their noses in distaste.

"He's
Tom
and I'm
Bobby
," the younger one said, and the other, Tom, interrupted with, "And Archie ain't here, he's taking Hattie to Granny's."

"Cos she lives there now cos Granny's got no friends."

"She comes back for visits though."

"Hattie does, not Granny."

"I see," I said solemnly, fighting not to smile; they seemed very serious about telling me the news but in fact came across as a strange young double act from the music-hall. "Which means you must be Elizabeth," I said to the girl watching me curiously over the top of her sewing.

"
Bessie
," the boys insisted.

"And you're Annie," I said to the littlest girl, remembering at the last moment not to say
Anna
, and the boys nodded approvingly as though I had passed a test. Archie had spoken of her more than any of the others – he had never called her his favourite, but it was evident in his eyes when he told me funny stories about the things she said and did – and I felt the strange sensation that I knew her as well as if she were my own little sister, although she became shy when I smiled at her and hid behind her father's legs until he picked her up again.

"Yes, and Annie and Bobby and Tom are up past their bedtime," Mr Wilkes said, nodding to me as he ushered the little ones out of the door in a howl of protests. I couldn't help laughing; for a moment it was as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened between Archie and me, and I was visiting a friend's home as any other young man might, then I remembered why I was there and my laughter suddenly sounded forced and fake in my ears.

Mrs Wilkes was pouring tea when the back door opened and closed and footsteps sounded out in what must have been a little hallway beyond the living-room door. Instinctively I stood, then hovered there awkwardly until Archie came into the room; he was already saying something to his mother, but when he saw me he stopped where he was and I wondered whether his fleeting moment of surprise and panic was as obvious to his parents and sister as it was to me.

"You did say I might call round any time," I said stupidly, and Archie stared at me for the briefest moment longer before gathering himself and smiling as though seeing me in his living-room making conversation with his mother and father were the most ordinary thing in the world.

"Shall we go to the pub?"

I said my goodbyes and followed Archie back through to the hall, where he took his hat and coat from a peg, and my hat, leading me then out of the door in the scullery, through a scrubby little garden of struggling vegetables and out of the gate onto the street. He was barely looking at me, his hands stuffed deep in his coat pockets and his shoulders hunched slightly. There was an air of desperate discomfort about him, which I recognised instantly; I felt it crippling me too. Neither of us spoke for a while, although I tried, and I could see him trying. There was only the soft clump of footsteps on the road and this heavy hanging silence between us, until eventually he took a breath and asked quickly, "Did you get the sack?"

I could see the pub up ahead of us, lit windows and crowds of men both inside and out. "Is there somewhere more private?"

He led me instead to Kennington Park, half a mile or so from his house, and we walked across the open fields so we would be sure not to meet anybody on the paths. Once we were a safe distance away, with space all around so we would be able to see anybody coming long before they could hear us, I finally glanced at Archie's face and found it flushed in the cheeks, perhaps with the chill of the evening but I thought not, and his lower lip caught anxiously between his teeth. He looked back at me, then his gaze slid away and settled on his feet, kicking at the grass and clods of dirt as thought they were to blame for this whole situation.

"I've not got the sack, and neither have you." His head whipped back up to stare at me, all wide eyes and raised eyebrows as though he didn't believe what I was saying. I tried to explain as we walked slowly through the park, although I stumbled over the words; first I began to tell him what Mr Everett had said about the need for discretion, then halted myself hastily because it sounded as though I believed this to be some sort of genuine love affair that would carry on despite all the risks and despite this painful shame between us that was making it difficult for both of us to talk. I tried then to cover up my stumble with nonchalance, but that sounded as though the night before, the dressing up and kisses and the sensation in my stomach of falling in love or falling to damnation or both things at once, was a throwaway moment of carefree indulgence that I had not meant or especially liked. I was glad of the cool evening air on my face; I felt sure that the flush of embarrassment in my cheeks would light me up like a lantern without it.

"He sees it as a business opportunity," I managed, and Archie beside me said nothing, just carried on walking by my side through the darkening park. "He knows a gent whose tastes are–" There was no way to say it that didn't make me feel like running away. I sorted through every possible description I could think of, and in a weak voice I finished with, "
particular
."

"Particular how?"

"Boys play-acting as girls."

"Oh."

"Yes."

"Bloody hell."

"Yes."

"And he asked if you and I...?"

"Yes."

Even in the twilight I could see how pale Archie had turned. "You did say no, didn't you?"

"Of course I said no, how could you think I wouldn't?"

Something about his shoulders seemed to relax slightly at that; there was even an unamused, breathless sort of laugh in his words when he spoke again. "If you'd said yes without telling me first I would have knocked all your teeth out." Then after a moment he gave me a curious sideways look and asked quietly, "Would you have said yes if I'd said yes?"

The question startled me. It was something I had never considered; I had assumed Archie would be as horrified with the idea as I was. "That's a useless question, because you've said no."

"But
if
?"

"I wouldn't want people watching." Once those first words were out, that first blundering confession, the rest seemed easier, as though my sense of shame had buckled and snapped beneath the weight this last night and day had heaped upon it. "I don't know what I feel about the things that happened except that I'm not sorry about any of it, not a bit, only that Mr Everett saw. I don't want that awful old man looking at you in photographs, or at me for that matter. I wouldn't do it for all the money in England."

Beside me, Archie's arm bumped gently against mine as we walked, then he widened the gap between us to make sure it wouldn't happen again. "It was the gin, wasn't it?" he said, as though he hadn't heard me.

"I suppose it was."

"Gin and... being tired from working all day and that far into the night. And taking those photographs of the others together." The excuses piled up like bricks in a building, and I nodded my agreement with all of them and waited for this dreadful feeling of nausea to go away. "Being, um. Overwhelmed by things, lots of things all at once, and acting in ways you normally wouldn't."

"Like the strange things you say out loud in a fever dream."

"Yes." We had come to another path by now, although the only people we could see on it were a man and woman walking arm in arm far ahead of us so it was still safe to talk as long as we were careful to keep our voices low enough not to carry. "I'm not sorry either, you know," Archie said softly, though he wouldn't look at me when he did.

"I'm glad." It appeared this was the cause of my nausea, this idea that the happenings of the night before would be enough to end the fledgling friendship that had already come to mean so much to me, for I began to feel better then.