Kitty Peck and the Child of Ill-Fortune (8 page)

The trunk was now in the middle of the floor between the seats. David and Joey stood in the dim passage outside. I could feel the throb of the engine through the polished boards beneath my feet.

‘I must thank you, bonny Kitty, from the bottom of my heart. I won’t forget this.’ David swallowed the words, took off his cap and twisted it about in his hands. He looked wretched. There were great bags beneath his eyes.

‘Until we meet again.’ He leaned forward to kiss my cheek and my skin burned.

‘Robbie loves his poppet, don’t lose it.’ He whispered the words and then, before I could ask what he meant, he pushed roughly past. I knew it was because he didn’t want me to see him crying.

Joey caught my hand and stared at me. I couldn’t read his expression at that moment – there was such a stew of confusion, pain, fear and relief simmering through me I wasn’t exactly sure what was happening. I thought he looked sad, but looking back now it was fear I saw in his eyes, I’d stake Paradise on it.

‘Thank you.’ He mouthed the words and hugged me tightly.

‘Joey. I . . . I wish. Yesterday . . . I wanted to say—’

He put a finger to my lips. ‘There’s nothing to say. We’ve found each other again and I must thank you,
for everything
.’ He kissed my forehead, wrapped his arms around me and glanced at Lucca, who was staring at the trunk.

‘Keep her safe, my friend. She’s the only family I have.’

‘Of course!’ Lucca raised his hat as a sort of salute and threw it down onto a seat. ‘She is a sister to me too. Always remember that.’

Joey nodded. He released me and reached across to clasp Lucca’s arm. The hollow sound of doors slamming echoed down the corridor.

‘You have to go, Joey. It’s time.’

‘It’s never time, Kitty.’ He winked and suddenly he was the man – the bold, brazen, cocksure brother I adored. Truly, Joseph Peck was the best actor I ever knew. Almost.

He blew a kiss, turned and sauntered away down the corridor. Old brass buttons and dander fluff was standing at the end, twitching to slam the door.

I watched my handsome brother disappear from view and then I heard the dismal, final thud.

‘Quick, Lucca, open the blind and roll down the window.’ I needn’t have asked. He was already working the brass handle in the panelling, winding it furiously to make the glass slide.

I stepped past the trunk, without giving a thought to what was inside it, and leaned out. David had gone but Joey was still there, wreathed in smoke. Lucca stood just behind me, one hand gripping the rim of the glass. I could sense him craning over my shoulder.

The train jerked forward and Joey started to walk alongside us.

‘Joey, I’ve got these. They’re yours. I meant to give them back to you.’ I scrabbled at the high collar of the blue dress and freed the gold chain with the ring and the Christopher. I tried to pull it over my head, but the links caught up in my hair.

‘Keep them.’ Joey was running now as the train gathered speed. ‘Or return them to me next time we meet. It can be a sort of promise between us?’ He reached up to seize my hand. ‘I . . . I’m sorry for everything, Kitty.’

I nodded. I couldn’t speak. I felt like I was trying to swallow down a goose egg whole and my eyes were watering. It wasn’t the smoke.

The train was rocking now. I had to drop Joey’s hand, but I leaned out further to keep him in view. Lucca was no longer beside me. I heard a padded seat wheeze as he sat down heavily.

Joey stopped running. He waved and called something out but I couldn’t hear him. There was an ear-splitting whistle and a tremendous whoosh as a torrent of steam rolled back from the engine ahead. My brother disappeared from view.

I covered my mouth and nose and stood on tiptoe desperate to catch a last glimpse of him. As the train veered to the left, the smoke cleared and I saw that there was someone standing watching at the very end of the platform, only it wasn’t Joey. It was a man with snow-white hair.

A couple of seconds later he disappeared too as the train pulled round and a jagged outcrop of smoke-blackened buildings obscured my last view of the Gare du Nord.

I wiped my cheeks, drew back from the window and plonked down in the seat next to Lucca. I wanted to close my eyes and sleep for a hundred years, but my head felt as if it was about to burst. I couldn’t tell if it was the drink from the night before or the tumble I’d taken. Both, most like. A little shower of lights went off in my head and a pain knifed through my right temple. I leaned forward, pressing the heel of my hand into my eye. At the same moment there was a wailing noise from the trunk. Lucca looked down at the lid, which quite clearly had holes punched across it at one end. The noise came again – the unmistakable sound of a baby crying.

Lucca stared at me and I stared at the trunk. He pushed his hair back behind his ears and bent to release the three clasps along one side. As the last one clicked open he spoke.

‘Do you have something to tell me, Fannella?’

If I held my head to one side it was a bird, maybe two of them twined round each other. I narrowed my eyes. No, that weren’t right, there was just one black body. It had two heads, though, which struck me as unnatural.

I swept Lady Ginger’s dice up into my hand and scattered them across the desk again. They fell in a splayed triangle and I stared at the markings on their upper faces until the lines started to blur and shift for themselves. The same thing came to mind.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t the answer I was looking for.

There was a knock. Before I had a chance to tumble the dice back into their rough green case, Peggy walked into the room that had, until the day before yesterday, been Fitzy’s parlour at The Gaudy. Robbie was planted on her hip.

‘We’ve been charming the ladies this morning, haven’t we?’ She jiggled him about and he squealed with pleasure. I noted that his big brown eyes never left her face as she settled in the chair across from me.

‘He’s got quite an eye, Kitty. He likes the pretty ones, don’t you?’ She shifted him onto her lap and bounced him about a bit, producing another gurgle of excitement.

Now, I knew Peggy would know what to do with a baby, but I have to admit that the way Robbie Lennox had taken to her was quite surprising. Looking back, I’d even say I was green of her, did I but know it.

‘Do you want to hold him?’

I shook my head. ‘He looks very happy where he is.’

Tell truth, every time I held him I felt like I might break him. He wriggled and fretted in my arms and his brown skin bruised up easy, even though I didn’t cling tight. Not having much experience of handling anything more domestic than a mop I thought I was doing it wrong.

Lucca had been a wonder on that journey home. Once we’d got Robbie out of the trunk he was a natural with him. Then again, there was a time back in his village in Italy when he’d had four younger brothers and two sisters to look out for, so he knew what he was doing.

He’d had plenty to say to me about it all – and none of it was too comforting – but every time that baby made a sound he gathered him up in his arms, sang to him in Italian and was soft and sweet as mother Mary herself. Anyone passing our compartment would have taken us for a proper little family.

Peggy dabbed at some dribble on Robbie’s chin. ‘You’ve got his poppet, haven’t you, Kit?’

I nodded and opened the drawer to my left. The small soft rabbit made from squares of brightly patterned cloth sat on top of the letter David had left in the trunk for me. I’d found it at the bottom after taking out a few bits of clothing, a blanket, glass feeding bottles and several large squares of cotton for Robbie’s necessaries.

I handed the rabbit to Peggy and scooped up the dice.

‘I don’t know how you can touch them bleedin’ things, they’re evil, just like she was.’ Peggy shuddered. ‘There he goes . . .’ She started to bounce the rabbit about on the edge of the desk.

I poured the dice back into the case and put it in the drawer on top of David’s letter. If I’d hoped that it was a message of a personal nature, I’d’ve been very much disappointed. The envelope contained travel papers, good forgeries they was too, and a loving description of Robbie’s likes and dislikes, accompanied by some advice on the best ways to handle him – feeding and that. He didn’t take to cold so he was to be kept well wrapped. Apparently he had a tooth coming.

I realised then that David Lennox didn’t have me down as the maternal type, not like Peggy. I closed the drawer and smiled as she hopped the rabbit back and forth. Peggy still had black rings under her eyes and I knew there was a rough bald patch at her crown where her thick dark hair wasn’t growing. A few days before I went to Paris, I’d helped her find a mouse in Mrs Conway’s wig store to cover it.

I’d told her pretty much everything about Joey and Paris, excepting going into personal detail about Robbie’s father, and she was happy as a sparrow in springtime to take care of the little one for me. I had so much on my plate that I couldn’t handle him, but I wanted to make sure he was cared for right, and Peggy was just the girl.

As far as she knew, I was looking after Robbie as a temporary favour to one of my brother’s friends – none of them being the maternal type neither . . . which wasn’t far off. When I told her about it, she didn’t roll her eyes and she didn’t mouth a mealy judgement, she just took the little lad in her arms.

Now, I didn’t want any more acid talk about me in the halls than was already scraping the paint off the walls, so I asked her to put it round that she was sitting the baby for her cousin up Archway who had a misfortune to attend to – and everyone seemed happy with that.

Anyway, Robbie was good for Peggy.

Since that time at the warehouse she’d been low. Of course she had – anyone who knew the half of what those girls had been through would understand it. We’d sworn – all of us – never to talk about it to anyone. Thing is, Polly and Anna, they didn’t want to be seen as damaged goods and I could see the justification of that.

They were damaged all the same, mind, damaged somewhere inside their heads. Polly had moved up north with her boy, Michael, and pretty red-haired Anna worked at The Gaudy where I could keep an eye on her.

I shut it all away in a place light never fell. I made sure of that. But Peggy wasn’t like me, and worse had happened to her. I don’t know what exactly, we never touched on the detail. All I knew is that she felt unclean, worthless somehow – and it made me sick to the stomach to think that someone as good and decent as my friend Peggy Worrow should ever think that of herself. If the man responsible was in hell – and I was sure he was – I hoped Old Nick was making him comfortable.

I locked the drawer and slipped the key into my pocket. ‘They’re just dice, Peg. The parrot’s worse. It stinks, it doesn’t like being alone and it curses like a docker’s nancy, only in her voice. It’s a good thing Robbie’s with you most of the time, or he’d pick up a filthy mouth. I swear it’s like she’s in the room at The Palace with me sometimes.’

‘Watching you! Did Joey know where she’s gone?’ Peggy huddled Robbie closer.

‘No. He knows nothing more than I do, except that she has another place somewhere. Not here in Limehouse.’

‘Well, let’s hope she stays there.’ Peggy looked at me narrow. ‘You still all right about this, Kit?’

I nodded. ‘Look at him. He couldn’t be happier.’

‘Not Robbie.’ She smiled as a fat brown fist flailed against her arm to reach the rabbit. ‘I mean what’s happening to you. What’s happening here. It’s all so . . .’

She paused and shrugged. ‘You’re still the same Kitty, that’s what I’ve been telling everyone.’

‘What are they saying about me, Peg?’

She looked down to the floorboards where Robbie had dropped the rabbit. I could tell she didn’t want to catch my eye.

‘Well?’

‘You know how they all go on – the girls in particular. It’s just spite and flouncing mainly. But then there’s Fitzy.’

I snorted. ‘I thought he’d be happy to get his feet under Mr Leonard’s desk at last. He’s always wanted The Comet.’

It was true enough. The Comet was the finest of Lady Ginger’s halls. It was no secret that Fitzpatrick had been itching to squeeze his wide chequered buttocks into the leather seat formerly occupied by Mr Leonard, the previous manager. The poor man had gone missing around the time Lady Ginger held her last gathering – sitting like a queen up on The Comet’s curved stage while two of his fancy chorus girls had their heads shorn in public by her Chinamen. She was putting on a show for us all, making an example of Frances Taylor and Sukie Warren who had talked a little too freely about her affairs.

That was the same day The Comet’s plaster ceiling came down, taking me and my cage with it. Lady Ginger weren’t too happy about that neither. I hoped dapper Solly Leonard had retired to his sister’s place in Kent, but something told me that these days he was more likely to be pushing up daisies than pruning roses.

I was sorry – I liked him, which was more than I could say for old Fitzy with his tooth-rot breath and wandering hands. Trouble was, I needed him. No one kept order and no one knew the business of running the halls like he did. I didn’t want him near me, but I didn’t want to lose him – not yet, anyway. That’s why I sent him over to The Comet.

‘What’s Fitzy been saying?’ I leaned forward, drumming my fingers on the wood. ‘You might as well tell me, Peg. I’d sooner hear it from you than anyone else.’

She hefted Robbie about in her lap. David Lennox was right, he was a bonny bairn.

‘He’s been stirring it with the hands. Putting it into their heads that you’re not up to it – that they’ll be out on their ears looking for dock work come summer because the business will fail.’ She took a breath and looked at me direct. ‘He says it’s not natural them taking orders from a “chit of a girl”.’ She mimicked his heavy Irish.

‘Well, that’s rich – he was happy to take orders from Lady Ginger for long enough!’

‘But she wasn’t a girl, she was a . . .’ Peggy trailed off. She was one of the few people who knew Lady Ginger was my grandmother and now she was uncertain what to say.

‘She was a vicious old bitch,’ I finished off for her. ‘But she was a woman and Fitzy worked for her – they all did. What does your Danny think?’

‘After what happened he’d do anything for you – you know that, Kit.’ She shook her head. ‘But he’s confused as well. One minute you’re a slop girl in the gallery, next you’re an act and now you’re running the place. They all want to know what’s going on.’

I circled the pad of an index finger over a knot in the wood of the desk. She was right.

Apart from Peggy, Lucca and the Beetle, no one else knew exactly why Lady Ginger had left The Gaudy, The Comet and The Carnival in my hands, but I wasn’t ready to explain it to them yet. And what’s more, I wasn’t ready to explain – to anyone other than Lucca – that I’d inherited a lot more than three flea-ridden halls on the City’s skirts. I wasn’t even ready to face that myself – or the meeting with the Barons. Every time I thought about it my mouth went dry. In a couple of weeks’ time at the beginning of May I’d be dandled like a kitten in front of the most deadly company in London. It was a thousand times more dangerous than being hoisted up in that cage every night.

Just bringing it to mind now made my back prickle with sweat under the cotton blouse. I was beginning to wonder about the decision I’d made that day. I still had the words of the letter my grandmother left for me in her room at The Palace in my head.

The choice is yours, Katharine. You can walk from this room today and live a small, narrow life or you can build your own empire. Perhaps a better one. You have proved yourself capable in more ways than you know.

Capable of what? Everyone knew how the Barons ruled London.

‘You need to make them respect you, Kit.’

‘Respect?’ My head shot up in surprise – but, of course, Peggy meant the hands.

I smiled. ‘Now that’s a funny word to use. Don’t you mean fear? If you think I’m going to call a gathering to lay down the law like The Lady used to, you’re mistaken. I’m not her and I’m not going to run the halls like she did.
I’m not
.’ I thumped my hand down hard on the table and Robbie stopped wriggling and gurgling. He looked across at me and his lower lip trembled.

I stared at the bare walls of The Gaudy’s office. Fitzy had carted his cheap patterned china, the fringed shawls and embroidered cushions over to The Comet. For such a big raw bruiser, his taste in furnishings was surprisingly dainty. I had no doubt that Mr Leonard’s pristine office now looked like a trollop’s parlour. And knowing Fitzy’s keen appetite for gin it most likely smelt like one too.

Looking back it was odd, but the only items in the way of decoration I’d brought in so far had belonged to Nanny Peck. I’d tied her old plaid shawl over the back of the chair – I wrapped it round my shoulders for comfort when I was going over the books of an evening – and I’d placed a chipped blue and white jug that had come over from Ireland with her on the mantle over the fire. Every spring Ma filled that jug with daffodils and set it on the table in the front room at Church Row. That seemed like a hundred years ago now.

After Ma had died, The Gaudy had become a sort of second home for me – Joey had seen to that. I think it was why I wanted to set up my office here because it was a familiar place in an uncertain land. It was comforting to be with my ‘family’.

I laughed out loud. I’d just parroted Lady Ginger at her most ‘maternal’.

‘You all right?’ Peggy frowned. ‘You still got a scar from that accident in Paris. Knocks on the head like that can be dangerous. I’ve heard you can go weeks before the effects show up and by then it’s too late.’

I touched the crusted scab on my temple. I thought I’d pulled my hair forward enough to cover it. ‘Is it obvious?’ I asked. ‘Do I need to dip into Mrs Conway’s paint box?’

Peggy shook her head. ‘No, but it don’t matter about the size. It’s where you were hit that makes the difference.’

I thought about that trolley again. Tell truth, I’d thought about it quite often since we come back. I couldn’t shake the thought that the porter who’d knocked me over the platform and into the path of an oncoming train had known exactly what he was doing. Lucca was furious with the man, but when I finally told him what had happened – there being the question of a mysterious wailing baby in a trunk to deal with first – we were steaming through the countryside somewhere between Paris and Calais so it was too late to do anything about it.

When he’d calmed down a bit he said he was sure it was accidental, on account of the smoke and the crowd at the station, and he reckoned my recollection was likely muddled by the blow I’d taken. But I wasn’t so sure.

Robbie started to cry now. He squirmed in Peggy’s arms and plucked at the cotton of her dress with his fat little fingers. She began to rock him back and forth.

‘He’s tired, I’d best get him home. Danny’s built him a crib, one that rocks. Your Lucca’s going to come over and paint it.’

I let that pass.