Kitty Peck and the Child of Ill-Fortune (9 page)

‘That working out all right then?’ I nodded at Robbie. ‘Danny doesn’t mind you looking after him for me?’

She grinned broadly. For a moment there was a real flash of the old Peggy. ‘Course not. Sometimes I think he’s more fond of him than I am. He can tell Robbie’s good for me, and besides, the money’s handy, Kit. I’m grateful for that – we both are.’

‘He still playing with the flat boys? I thought he’d given up on all that.’ I tried to make the question sound casual.

Peggy shrugged. ‘He swears on his mother’s Bible he’s not, but then half the pages are missing.’

‘Surely he knows by now you can’t throw good coins after bad? They never come back.’

‘He’s promised me, Kit, and . . . and I want to believe him. What’s this, young man?’ She dabbed the corner of her neat white cuff at something dribbling from Robbie’s mouth.

I smiled. ‘Well, if anyone can knock some sense into Danny Tewson you can, Peg, and you can keep an eye on him too. I’m glad you two are together now. You couldn’t go back into lodgings on your own, not after . . .’ I didn’t finish, but Peggy knew what I meant. She stood and hoisted Robbie onto her left hip.

‘Come on then, handsome. Mustn’t forget poppet, must we?’

She scooped the patchwork rabbit from the floor. I watched as she knotted the ears securely around her belt, all the while swaying from foot to foot to soothe the kid. Like I said, she was a natural.

I could afford to pay Peggy well to look after Robbie Lennox. The Beetle griped about it, but I was happy to set up a regular arrangement. I knew Danny was relieved too. According to Lucca he still hadn’t got his gambling under control, although he talked often enough about paying his dues and swearing off the cards.

‘He couldn’t be in better hands, Peg. Thank you.’ I stood and went round the desk to hold the door open for her. Outside in The Gaudy’s main hall the murmur of work and conversation stopped for a fraction of a second as the hands and a group of the girls who were practising a new routine looked round. I could feel their eyes sliding over me, but then they all fluffed themselves up and carried on from where they’d left off.

Peggy leaned across to kiss me on the cheek, careful to let everyone see it. I was grateful to her.

‘Thank you,’ I mouthed.

She smiled. ‘No need to thank me. I’m glad to look after him, especially when you think about that business in Mordant Street.’

She saw that I was confused. ‘You haven’t heard?’

I shook my head. ‘Heard what?’

‘There was a fire last night. Mrs Cudlipp’s place – you know, the baby farmer – that’s what people said of her anyway, God rest her soul.’

‘You mean she’s dead?’

Peggy nodded. ‘Her and the four little ones she was boarding. Danny heard it was a fallen candle. Whole place went up in less than half an hour. They were all asleep on the top floor.’ She cuddled Robbie close to her chest. ‘Doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?’

I watched as she walked to the back of the hall, picking her way round the tables set up for the night. She was thinner now too, I noted. She’d lost the plushy bloom that made Fitzpatrick watch her like a dog at a butcher’s window.

She stopped for a chat with a couple of the girls. When I heard them laughing, it cut. No one was easy like that with me these days. Tell truth, since that very first night up in the cage I’d felt like someone held apart – just as Lady Ginger intended.

‘Why the sad face, Mistress Kitty?’ I turned. Old Peter was leaning against the curved apron. He was wearing a cape and a flat cap, his beard waxed into two points. Behind him one of the hands was testing the limelight flares. As The Gaudy’s stage flooded with sudden brilliance, it threw half of Old Peter’s face into shadow, giving him the look of a pantomime devil.

I say old, but he was probably a decade younger than Fitzy. He always looked sad – that was the thing, it was why he seemed ancient. The Gaudy’s cornet player had the drooping donkey eyes of someone who’d seen a lot and suffered for it.

I went over to stand next to him and watched the lad, Eddie I think it was, fiddle with the cylinders along the edge of the stage. ‘Careful – you don’t want to lose a hand.’ Eddie jumped like a roach on a skillet and scuttled off into the wings. Another one wary of me, I thought. I looked up at Old Peter. ‘Kitty’ll do fine. You’re early, aren’t you? Doors don’t open for another hour and a half tonight.’

He raised the cornet and it shone in the limelight. That instrument was his pride and joy, he never went anywhere without it. He even called it Zhena, which means ‘wife’ back where he came from.

‘They need music to rehearse.’ He nodded at the girls who had been talking to Peggy – she’d gone off with Robbie now. ‘It’s a new song and a new dance. I said I’d play for them . . . as I played for you.’

I tried to smile. ‘Those days are over now. I won’t be going back up again, if that’s what you’re harking after.’

‘But you were good, Kitty, very good – a born performer. You belong there,’ he waved Zhena at the stage, ‘not behind the doors of an office. Don’t hide away.’

‘I’m not hiding from anyone!’ I was sharp, mainly because I knew he was right. ‘I’m busy. This doesn’t all happen by magic, you know.’ I gestured at the hall, but he narrowed his eyes and tilted his head to one side.

‘So, tell me about the new song. What do you think of it?’

I hadn’t seen it and he knew. Something about a sailor coming home and finding
all
his wives waiting for him. Lucca, who’d painted up a bit of scenery to look like The Angel Tavern on West Ferry Road, said it was likely to be a coiner and I took his word on it.

When I didn’t answer, Old Peter started to unfasten his cape and growled something in Russian.

‘And what’s that then in London?’

He draped the cape over a chair. ‘A proverb from my home – the cat craves fresh fish, but she will not wet her feet. I think she is like you, Kitty. You want to be part of all this again.’ He stared at the huddle of giggling dancing girls. ‘Netta, are you ready?’ He called the name of the chorus leader. She looked over and I saw her face harden when she caught sight of me with him.

‘But you are . . . afraid. They won’t bite, not if you speak to them. Take an interest, show them you care.’ He sounded just like Peggy. I fiddled with the ivory buttons on my cuffs as he went on. ‘Listen, I’ve known you a long time, Kitty Peck – you have a good soul. You need to let them see that the girl they knew hasn’t changed.’

‘Hasn’t she?’ I chewed my lip. Mrs Conway had just sailed in through the back, black hair piled higher than Swami Jonah’s best turban and all painted up like a china doll – only one a child wouldn’t care to find sitting at the end of the bed come midnight. She bloused over and waved a sheet under Old Peter’s nose.

‘I’ve got a new song I’d like to try here. “The Rani by the Fountain” – it’s fresh and rather gay. Been very popular in Manchester. Bessie Ladely’s done well with it.’

Bessie Ladely was a couple of years older than me, at the most.

Mrs Conway tried to bat her eyelashes like the ingénue she’d been forty years ago. One set detached itself and rested on her cheek like a dead spider.

It was time for that chat I’d been avoiding.

Tan Seng held my coat open and bowed. I pushed my arms into the sleeves, turned and bowed back to him.

‘Is Mr Fratelli here?’ He nodded and pointed downward.

The first fingers on both of Tan Seng’s hands had long yellow nails which curled inward at the tips. Mostly he kept them tucked away in the loose grey sleeves of the tunics he wore, but every time they came out I couldn’t help staring. Lucca said he used the nails to clear his opium pipe, but I wasn’t so sure. They weren’t black like the old cow’s fingers.

He must have seen me looking, because he bowed his head again and deftly folded his hands back into his sleeves.

‘He came early, Lady.’

I was almost getting used to that now. The first time I felt a twist in my gut and asked him to call me by my name, but he shook his head so violent that his silk cap came askew.

‘You are The Lady.’ He’d kept repeating the words, his mouse-black eyes never leaving my face. Over in the corner Jacobin woke up and went off, squawking the word ‘lady’ over and over like the parrot was agreeing with him.

I’d inherited Tan Seng along with the rest of The Lady’s lascars and Chinamen. Mostly they worked in the dens and warehouses across Paradise, but Tan Seng ran The Palace in the way the Monseigneur ran Joey’s establishment.

I swear the old man was a better mind-reader than Swami Jonah.

Sometimes I’d turn round to call for him and he’d be there already, standing in a corner silent and watchful. It would have been unnerving if it wasn’t for the fact that he also had the knack of making himself invisible when he wasn’t required.

He and his brother Lok, who was even older than he was with skin as rumpled as a bedsheet in a doss-house (which was unnerving seeing as how from behind he looked like a child), had a set of rooms in the basement. I never went down there. It seemed like an intrusion.

Now, I’ll be straight about it – at first I thought Tan Seng and his brother were Lady Ginger’s spies and I wanted rid of them. I said as much to Telferman at our second meeting.

The Beetle looked up at me from behind those half-moon specs and said very slow and serious, like he was talking to a child, ‘You are mistaken. They are the most honourable men in Paradise. They are yours entirely and would give their lives for you. You will do well to remember this, always.’

That didn’t alter the fact that they put me in mind of bits of old furniture she’d left behind.

For the first week Tan Seng and me circled each other like a couple of blinded fighting cocks waiting for the hoods to be drawn, but, tell truth, I began to warm towards him. It didn’t matter what time I came in, he’d be there in the hallway waiting for me with sweet tea or a mug of hot spiced gin if it was late. And Lok was almost as keen as I was to clean and air the rooms that were coated with a sticky brown layer of Lady Ginger’s opium smoke.

At first the old man tried to stop me working with him, but I wasn’t having it. I needed to clean my grandmother’s shadow out of The Palace before I could live there. I needed to make sure that every trace of her was gone. Looking back, I reckon I also needed to be doing something hard and physical to stop my mind. All those nights I spent on the end of a mop swilling out the gallery at The Gaudy hadn’t been wasted.

Lok might have been ancient as the Bloody Tower and tiny as a child, but he was wiry as a stevedore on Timber Dock. Together we washed the walls and swept away the cobwebs that hung in dirty garlands from the moulded cornices of the chamber where The Lady had held court.

In better houses they hang chains of dainty paper loops across the ceiling at Christmas, but if Lady Ginger had ever celebrated the birth of the lamb, the only decorations she looked up at were stiff with dust and dead flies.

After we’d done the walls, we got down on our knees and scrubbed the floorboards. Although I couldn’t make out a word Lok said – not that he said much, mind – I sensed that he approved.

I moved in after a week and that first night, when I found a jug of small blue flowers beside my bed, I knew he liked me.

I fastened the buttons at my neck and pushed the fancy shell comb deeper into my hair to keep it back. ‘There’s no need to wait up this evening. I’ll be late.’

Tan Seng shook his head. ‘Always ready for you, Lady, whatever the hour.’ He shuffled across the boards to open the door for me, pushed his hands back into his grey sleeves and bowed again. ‘Mr Fratelli waits in the hall.’

I bowed. As I walked out onto the landing the smell of beeswax polish filled my nose. Lok had been buffing up the oak stairs. I took a deep breath and nodded to myself. The Palace was changing – I was making it mine, but it wouldn’t be so easy to put everything to rights outside, would it?

I adjusted the lid on a big china pot set next to the door so it sat right and went down. In the marble tiled hallway Lucca was admiring a painting. I went to stand next to him.

‘I found it in one of the closed-up rooms at the top of the house. It seemed a crime to hide it away in the dark. What do you think?’

He brushed the canvas lightly with the tips of his fingers. ‘I can’t see it clearly in this light, but it is good, I think. The fabric of the coat has a quality – and the lace here at his sleeve is very finely executed. These are the clothes of a young man of fortune fifty, perhaps sixty years ago?’ He took a step back and stared up. ‘He is handsome and the expression in his face is . . .’ he looked back at me and grinned, ‘determined, a little like yours.’

I glanced up at the overdressed, pink-cheeked toff in the painting. He had a heart-shaped face and his large dark eyes were locked onto something over my shoulder. His left hand emerged from a spatter of froth at his cuff to gesture at a grand stone house fronted with columns and set among trees painted a distance behind.

I stretched my gloves and snaked my fingers into the leather. ‘He’s got a chin like mine, if that’s what you mean, but nothing else. You can’t even see his hair under the wig. As for handsome – I’ll let you be the judge of that. He’s not my taste. If you must know, I brought him down because I liked the colour of his coat. It brightens up the hall. You ready?’

Lucca’s smile faded. ‘Everyone has been summoned to The Gaudy. The call went out yesterday.’

‘And what are they saying about it?’

When he didn’t answer I nudged his arm. ‘Well?’

‘They wonder why you are calling a gathering.’

‘It’s not a gathering – it’s a meeting!’ I could hear the tightness in my voice.

‘They see it as the same thing and they are . . .’ He stared up at the ceiling as if he might unravel an answer from the scrolling loops of ornate plasterwork crawling about over our heads.

‘Go on, they are what exactly?’

Lucca sighed. ‘You know this already, Fannella. Some of them are angry. They wonder why you are now in this position. Some are scared that you have bad news, they believe you will sell because you cannot run the halls. Some of them – the girls mainly – are plainly jealous, and some of them are angry because . . .’ He paused and picked at some paint caught under his thumbnail.

‘Because?’ I stared at him and waited.

‘Because you are just a girl.’ Lucca shrugged sadly. ‘It is the way they think.’

‘All of them? Danny too?’

He shook his head. ‘Not everyone. Danny, Peggy and Anna – they have spoken for you. They will always support you after . . .’

I nodded, grateful to hear they took my part, even if they couldn’t tell anyone why.

‘And some others say you should at least be given a chance to prove yourself.’

‘Well, that’s generous of them, isn’t it?’ I reached for my bonnet from the hall table, planted it on my head and tied the ribbons so tight beneath my chin that it hurt. Lucca’s words didn’t come as a surprise, I’d heard as much from Peggy and Old Peter, but it didn’t make what I was about to do any easier.

I span round, reached for the handles and threw the double doors wide open. It was raining and the cobbles of Salmon Lane outside glistened in the slick of light puddling from the hallway.

Lucca’s voice came from behind. ‘Remember what we said on the boat, Fannella, about family.’

‘Family!’ I snorted and started off down the steps, my boots tapping furiously on the stones.

‘I’m not their bleedin’ mother, Lucca, I’m their employer.’

I stood behind my desk and listened.

Out in the hall people were talking. I could hear the clomping of feet on the boards, the clinking of glass and just occasionally a short burst of laughter. The taint of cheap cigarettes and rough gin leached into my office through the gap beneath the door.

I looked down at my hands splayed on the desk top. The little finger and ring finger of my right hand were twitching. I tried to stop the movement but it didn’t work. I raised my hand and twisted Joey’s ring and Christopher between my fingers like all the times when I went up in that cage.

Get a grip, girl, I told myself. If you can dandle seventy foot up without a net to catch you, then surely to God you can do this? The door swung open and I must have pulled tight of a sudden because the gold ring and the medal clattered to the floor, leaving me clutching a bit of broken chain.

The ring went under the desk, but I watched the Christopher roll like a penny towards the open door where Fitzy stood. His bloodshot eyes narrowed as he took in the changes I’d made and the faded bristles of his tache rippled beneath his broad red snout.

‘If you’re going to keep us waiting much longer, Mistress Kitty . . .’ he coated my name with a greasy slick of insolence, ‘then you’re going to have to get the lads to shift another barrel up from the cellar. People are dying of thirst out there, so they are. And it’s their night off. We’ve all got things to be seeing to, so if you don’t mind, ma’am.’

There it came again, an insult barely concealed. I shoved the broken chain into my pocket and straightened up. ‘Do you think I don’t know that, Mr Fitzpatrick?’ I gave his name the treatment and was surprised to hear my voice come out much stronger than I felt. ‘Get them to bring the house lights up. I’m not going up on the stage to waste limelight.’

He didn’t move. He just stood there in his chequered suit blocking my view of the hall beyond. I could still hear the sound of them all talking out there.

‘I said bring—’

‘Oh, I heard what you said, missy.’ Fitzy took a step toward me and pulled at the door behind him so it was almost shut again.

He grinned and pulled on one side of his straggly tache. ‘You’ve come a long way, haven’t you, Kitty? The proprietor of three halls now, is it? I just wanted to remind you how important it is for a
girl
in your shoes to know who her friends are. You treat me right and I’ll make sure no one bothers you.’

‘Like you used to bother Peggy?’

He fiddled with one of the brass buttons on his waistcoat and then he took a fob from a pocket in the lining of his jacket. ‘I haven’t got time for that sort of dirty talk.’ He flipped open the case and squinted at the dial. ‘It’s getting late, so it is. These good folk . . .’ he jerked his head back at the hall, ‘will be wanting their beds soon enough. I just wanted to be certain that we understood one another.’

I planted my hands on the desk and leaned forward. ‘Is that a threat, Mr Fitzpatrick?’

He shrugged. ‘With The Lady gone there’ll be changes in Paradise. A new Baron moving in. They’ve been circling for years, waiting for her to give up the reins and now it’s time. It’s a . . .’ he paused, searching for the right word, ‘
. . . nasty
world out there, so it is. I’ll be well placed to help you with that – ease your way as it were. Fact is, I know some people who could work to our mutual benefit. Let’s call it . . . a proposal, shall we?’

Now it was my turn to smile. ‘Well, thank you very much, but I’m not in the market for a husband at the moment.’

He frowned. ‘I don’t think you quite understood what I meant—’

‘Oh, I think I understood very well what you was driving at.’ I came out from behind the desk and walked slowly towards him. ‘But what I don’t think you’ve quite grasped yet is that the very last thing
a girl in my shoes
needs is assistance, least of all from you.’

I stopped just in front of him and looked up into his pockmarked face. I folded my arms. ‘Things to be seeing to, you said? And don’t I know it! It’s Thursday evening, so by my reckoning you must have an appointment at the pit in the cellar under The Old Queen’s Head. Got to see a man about a dog, have you?’

Fitzy’s eyebrows knitted together.

‘No? Maybe it’s Mr Tonkin tonight then? You got a nice little trade concern going on there with the Marine brew house. And then there’s customs officer Legge over at Shadwell New Basin. That’s a good reciprocal, I’d say. Dutch gin, is it, slipping over the back doorstep? Must be worth five or six guineas a month to the both of you.’

‘I . . . I don’t rightly . . .’ Fitzy’s little eyes darted about of an instant like he was a rat cornered by a tabby. I reached up to flick a little speck of imaginary dust from his sleeve as if I really cared for him. I rested my hand on his arm and smiled.

‘And what about the cut you get from Mrs Dainty for supplying her trade with gut rot? According to the books I don’t see much of that, do I? She keeps a very neat whorehouse, I’ll give her that, but she can’t keep a ledger. I’ve been through them all most careful with Mr Telferman and there appear to be some . . . gaps. Even he was surprised when I brought them to his notice.’

Fitzy looked down at my hand as I went on. I noticed the ginger bristles on his top lip quiver as his breathing came heavy. ‘Do you know what I think?’ I had to stop myself from laughing out loud at the look on his face now. The penny had dropped from a great height and it hurt.

‘I think you and me are going to have to sit down together soon and go through some figures. You see, Patrick Fitzpatrick, I haven’t just inherited The Lady’s theatres. I’ve inherited Paradise itself and everything and everyone in it – the dens off Butchers Row, the warehouses, the wharves, the trades, the crews, the customs, the lascars, the knuckle boys and even you and all of them waiting out there. You do understand what I’m telling you, don’t you?’