Sparrow Falling (12 page)

Beth grinned and hurried away.

O
CTAVIUS
T
HRING WAS
a small, slightly rotund gentleman with a battered hat sitting at an angle on exuberant grey curls, a waistcoat brightly adorned with embroidered peacocks, a large case, a set of extremely complicated-looking goggles hanging around his neck, and a beaming smile.

“Mrs Sparrow?” He thrust out a somewhat oil-stained hand. “What a charming name. Octavius Thring. I know, I know, a ridiculous moniker but I’m used to it. Oh, there they are! I say, isn’t that one of the ones that was on display in Bristol? May I look?” He was bouncing on his toes, his curls dancing in rhythm. He seemed to have more enthusiasm than could be contained in such a comparatively small frame – he barely reached Madeleine’s shoulder and was peering around it with intense eagerness.

Madeleine had been standing, somewhat protectively, in front of her devices, and now moved aside, smiling. “Of course, that is why you’re here, Mr Thring.”

“Do call me Octavius, if you don’t feel it too forward of me. Now, am I right in believing this is the Ruminator? A wonderful idea, quite wonderful. And just the sort of thing I would find most useful myself. I have a butterfly brain, you know, forever flitting from one idea to the other. I am convinced that such a means of focussing the attention on one thing for more than a moment would be most beneficial. And not just to myself. Can you conceive of how much art, how much literature, might be produced under its influence? What wonderful things might burst into existence if the notorious digressifications – I know, I know, it is a word of my own invention, but I feel it has a place in rational discourse – of the creative mind were to be suppressed?”

“Indeed,” Madeleine said, once she was certain the torrent of enthusiasm had ceased for the moment. “But I fear I have not yet perfected it. I am attempting to induce a state of calm, focussed attention. Unfortunately it acts on some subjects as a most effective soporific, not at all the effect I intended.”

“Ah, but there is certainly also a place for a soporific device! Perhaps it may need to be adjusted to the individual subject? It might, indeed, be capable of performing both functions – focussing the mind when needed, and inducing restful slumber when that is required?”

“My dear sir! I have been wrestling with this wretched device for months, trying to force it to be just one thing, and I believe you may have presented me with the very solution I should have been attempting!”

“Oh, no, well, that is most kind, but it’s only a thought, you know. Tell me, when I saw it on display, of course it was open, but not running. I could see the workings, and I wondered – how do you counteract the noise created by the pump? Did you not find it interfered with the vibrations?”

“Oh, I had to dampen it. It required some thought, but I was quite pleased with the result. Let me open the lid for you...”

By the time Beth returned with the tea – she was far too interested to give the errand to someone else – they were deep in a discussion about regulating steam-pressure and the possibilities of Etheric science to improve the working conditions in the manufactories.

“Oh, Beth dear – Octavius, this is Beth Hastings. She is an exceptional engineer. Beth, would you care to show Octavius the
Sacagawea
?”

“Oh, I...”

“Another intriguing name! May I ask what the
Sacagawea
might be?” Octavius beamed at her.

“Well,” Beth said, “she’s sort of a steam car, only I’ve boosted the engine with... fluid. A fluid. That I made.”

“Now I am most certainly intrigued. But you seem a little reluctant, my dear. Don’t worry. I know what it’s like, one’s creations are so very much like one’s children – I haven’t been blessed with children of the flesh, alas, but my children of the mind, as it were, well, one does so hope strangers will be kind. Don’t feel you must show it to me unless you are quite ready.”

“Well, you’re not here to see
me
, after all,” Beth said, torn between eagerness and nerves. The case had been unpacked and a scatter of intriguing instruments lay over the bench and floor. She longed for a closer look, but Mr Thring’s kindness only made her feel more awkward. “I... um... I’d better go.”

“Another time, then? If you feel able.”

Beth made a gesture somewhere between a nod and a curtsey, and hurried off, casting longing glances over her shoulder and colliding with Ma Pether in the corridor.

“Keep your eyes in front of you, child, or you’ll run right into trouble.”

“Sorry, ma’am.”

“No matter,” Ma Pether said, looking at the door Beth had just come out of. “Beth.”

“Yes ma’am?”

“Don’t call me ma’am, child, how many times’ve I told you? I’m Ma Pether, to you and everyone else. Who was that talking to Eveline’s mama?”

“Mr Thring. He’s an inventor.”

“Is he. Hmm. Pretty nicely turned out for an inventor, considering most of ’em I’ve come across ain’t got two farthings to bet on a lame dog.”

“Maybe he makes money from his inventions?”

“Like Mrs Sparrow done so noticeable?” Ma Pether said, rolling one of the smelly cheroots she alternated with her even smellier pipe between yellow-stained fingers, and fixing Beth with a cynical eye.

“She will,” Beth said.

“I’d bet more money on you, meself,” Ma said. “You got a knack for fixing, and people always want stuff fixed. Sometimes they’d rather that than something new. People hold onto the old, and try and make it fit, you ever noticed that? They’ll bodge something up to keep it working, sometimes because they en’t got money for new, but sometimes just acause they like the old thing, it’s comfortable and they understand it. And they’ll keep it going long past time. Even me. Stuff I kept in Bermondsey... rats’ll have got most of it by now if the river en’t... still...” Ma in pensive mood was new to Beth and more than a little disconcerting.

She seemed to come back to herself with a shake of the head, and glared at Beth. “Well?”

“I have to get on, ma’am... Pether.” Beth scurried away, hearing what sounded like a snort of laughter behind her. Ma Pether always made her feel stupid and more than a little uneasy, though she hadn’t ever done anything bad to Beth.

She was a criminal, of course. But then so was Eveline, and Eveline was her best friend. Pretty much her only one, in fact. Mama Duchen (
Sparrow
, she scolded herself) was unfailingly kind but could hardly be said to count as a friend.

It wasn’t so much the criminality, that made Ma Pether uncomfortable to be around; it was that she thought most other people were fools, and didn’t hesitate to say so.

Beth sighed. Compared to Ma Pether she
was
a fool, she knew, about most things other than engines. People were too complicated, and couldn’t be solved with a bit of reengineering or a drop of oil in the right place. But she couldn’t see anything wrong with Mr Thring, he seemed nice, and interested, and one day Mama Sparrow’s Etheric studies would make money, she was convinced of it.

“M
YSELF,
I
FIND
children of the mind to be somewhat less troublesome than those of the flesh,” Madeleine Sparrow confessed, as she tightened the seating of a radial arm.

“Indeed?” Octavius Thring was up to his shoulders in one of her larger devices, but popped his head out to look at her. His shirtsleeves were rolled up and his curls in even more disarray, his hat having been discarded on a side-table.

“I have a daughter. She is... we were separated for a long time, and her upbringing was... unorthodox. She has managed so well, but I fear... Oh, I don’t know why I’m chattering about such things! Tell me, you said you were working on something of your own, which also used vibratory principles?”

Thring regarded her for a moment, then withdrew fully from the machine, and straightened. “Yes. I have a theory, regarding cats.”

“Cats?”

“Do you keep a cat?”

“I am rather fond of them, but in recent years my situation has not permitted a pet,” Madeleine said.

“I am very fond of cats. I have three. I broke a leg, a few years back.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, and the break healed with remarkable speed. I believe there may be a connection.”

“A connection?”

“With the cats. One of them, Blanc de Neige, had a habit of sitting on my leg as I lay immobilised in a cast – oh, I had so many ideas, I considered having myself immobilised for a month every year, to see if the same effect could be obtained – where was I? Oh, yes, Blanc de Neige, she purred a great deal. I suspect she was rather pleased to have me at rest and able to pay her the attention she believed she deserved. The doctor commented on the speed at which I healed, and I believe the vibrations produced by her purring may have had an effect on the knitting of the bone. I have been attempting other experiments, but finding it rather difficult. I know that the great scientists are happy to experiment on themselves but alas I could not bring myself to break another bone on purpose. I dislike the idea of breaking an animal’s bone simply to see how it heals, even alongside the application of ether, which is in any case dreadfully tricky to use, especially on the smaller beasts. Also, alas, the cats do have a tendency to
eat
the other experimental elements, given the chance. So... but I still think the theory has merit.”

“How very interesting,” Madeleine said, struggling not to laugh.

“I have been wondering if it is possible to reproduce the effect by other means, but since it is so difficult to find out how a cat produces a purr in the first place, and I have no desire to dissect my poor darlings, nor to do so to any of their fellows, even if one could do so while maintaining the cat in a sufficiently calm and happy state for it to continue to purr, which seems almost certainly impossible and the mere attempt distressing for all parties...”

“I doubt such extreme measures would be necessary,” Madeleine said. “What one needs is to measure the vibration with as much accuracy as possible, and then find means to reproduce it. If one could record the purring, say, upon something like a phonogram disc...”

Limehouse

“M
R
S
TUG, IF
you could just see your way...”

“Huntridge, don’t waste my time. Can you or can’t you make your rent? I’ve been patient, Huntridge. Very patient. My patience has limits. I’m a businessman.”

“Yes, Mr Stug. I understand, Mr Stug. I’m just waiting to hear about a job...”

The man was pale and skinny, dark sideburns standing out stark against his pallid skin, his hands long-fingered with large, scarred knuckles. His wife stood behind the room’s one piece of furniture, a battered, age-worn table, as though it were the only thing protecting her from Stug, and clutched her youngest child to her chest. She did not look at Stug, nor at her husband, but stared dully at the bit of ragged cloth that served as a curtain, rocking the baby mindlessly, a motion without care or comfort, only something that she had done so many times, that once a child was in her arms she could no longer stop herself.

The rest of the children huddled on a pile of... something. An unidentifiable heap of what might be clean clothes, or dirty ones, or bedding, or all of them promiscuously piled together. They ranged from a couple of years to about eight and were all as pale and thin as their father and as dull-eyed as their mother, apart from one.

The girl was probably seven or so. She had copper curls that, despite probably never having been washed in her life, were still the brightest colour in the dim, miserable room. She was watching her father and Stug anxiously; her quick, clear eyes going from one to the other, her arms spread protectively in front of the children on either side of her.

“Girl, come here,” Stug said.

She looked at her father.

“Come on, Pearl, it’s all right,” the man said.

The girl got up off the pile, and went to her father’s side and slipped a hand into his. She looked up at Stug, her face still and unreadable. In this light it was hard to tell, but he thought her eyes were green. Would that do? It might. In any case she had something – something he was learning to look for but could not yet, quite, identify.

He felt a deep shudder move through his gut. If he got it wrong too many times... he had seen the Queen’s Harp.

One of the brats mewled and he straightened his spine. Look at them, look at them all, it was unfair, it was wrong. It
had
to work. And soon, soon, he had been promised – no more of this, he could leave all this behind him.

“Can you speak, girl?”

“Yes.”

“You should say, ‘Yes, Mr Stug,’” her father said.

“Yes, Mr Stug.” Her voice was hoarse, legacy of damp winters in rooms like this. That would mend.

“Can you recite?”

“I know a passage from the Bible, Mr Stug.”

He shuddered. That wouldn’t do at all. “Anything else?”

“I know a story,” she said. “I heard it from a man in the street who told tales. It’s called Death the Sweetheart. But it’s quite sad, perhaps you shouldn’t like to hear it?”

“Death the
Sweetheart?
” It sounded like the worst kind of nonsense, but perhaps the Queen might like it. “Go on,” he said.

Pearl set her feet and put her hands behind her back. “There was once a pretty young girl,” she said, “who had no father nor mother nor brothers or sisters. She lived all alone and saw no-one. And one day a man came to her door and said he had been travelling far and was very tired. She was a kind person, and let him in...”

The story was, indeed, nonsensical, with the foolish female falling in love with the pale stranger who came to her door, when anyone of sense would have turned him away and no nonsense about it, and she died, of course, as could only have been expected. But the child did the thing without self-consciousness, and with a kind of innocent gravity that perhaps might appeal – dammit, it was so hard to
tell.

Stug was overwhelmed with a sense of being hard-done-by. All this. This stinking room, these worthless people, this dance he must go through, never knowing, never being sure – all for something that the merest dog could do, the most wretched flea-bitten cur.