The Favoured Child (45 page)

‘I’ll be there,’ James said grimly. ‘We’ll come at about nine o’clock.’

Jimmy nodded, and picked up his torch. ‘I can go straight home now,’ he said, stowing the coins carefully inside the ragged jacket and turning to leave. Then he paused. ‘You will come, won’t you?’ he said, suddenly doubting.

I put a hand on his shoulder, I could feel the sharp shoulder and collar-bone through the thin jacket. ‘I promise,’ I said. ‘You could always come to me. We are lodging with Mrs Gibson at number twelve Gay Street. You can always find me there. But I shall come to you tomorrow morning.’

He nodded at that. ‘Till tomorrow, then,’ he said, and turned on his heel and melted into the shadows of the elegant streets of
Bath, for the very poor – if they are not working – are better invisible.

James took my hand and we walked on in silence. TU call for you at a quarter to nine,’ he said as we reached the doorstep of the lodging-house. I glanced up. Mama’s bedroom shutters were lined with light; she was waiting up for me.

‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘but I could go alone. Jem Dench would go with me.’

James shook his head with a smile, but did not trouble to reply. ‘You knew at once, didn’t you?’ he asked. ‘I saw your eyes go all hazy, and you smiled as if someone was calling your name, and then you said, “I’m going to take you home.” You knew him at once, didn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I said simply.

‘It’s a great gift,’ he said. ‘You are a lucky woman.’ He paused then as a thought struck him. ‘Why don’t you cancel your appointment with Phillips tomorrow?’ he suggested. ‘You may find you need to spend some time with the Wideacre children.’

‘I shall,’ I said. I hesitated. ‘I hope he will not mind,’ I said. ‘And then there’s Mama…’

James stepped back a little and looked at me with his head on one side. He was smiling. ‘I should perhaps not suggest this,’ he said mischievously, ‘but until you know more about the situation, do you think it would be very wrong simply to play truant? If your mama is unwell tomorrow, she will not go with you to Dr Phillips. You could tell her afterwards that you had not gone, and explain why.’

‘Mr Fortescue!’ I exclaimed. ‘That would be deceitful and dishonest.’

‘Yes,’ he confessed at once.

‘And very convenient,’ I acknowledged. ‘I shall decide what best to do in the morning. But whether I explain to Mama or not, I shall be ready for you at quarter to nine.’

He bowed and smiled to hear that note of decision in my voice. I put out both hands to him in sudden gratitude for the
way he had been with Jimmy and the way he seemed to understand. ‘Goodnight, James,’ I said.

‘Goodnight, Julia,’ he replied.

And then sleepy-faced Meg let me in the front door and I crept upstairs to my bedroom. After writing to Ralph, I tumbled into bed and slept as well as if I were home.

In the morning the Fish Quay was noisy and crowded with women buying for the lodging-houses and restaurants of Bath and occasional eccentric gentlemen, choosing their own catch, who eyed James and me with surprise. It was impossibly busy, with people bidding and shouting, and calling their wares, fishermen crashing great crates down on to the cobbles and fishwives shoving their baskets around and tying muslin squares over the top. But at least it was light there, and it only smelled of old and rotting fish.

The streets beyond it, where Jimmy led us, stank of fish, and vomit, and excrement. The lane was wet with slurry, and little streams of filth formed pools in the gutters where rubbish blocked their path. There was no pavement, there was no paving. The lane was a mud track, heaped with muck and refuse thrown from the windows of the overarching houses on each side. It was as dark as twilight, since the buildings stood so close, and not a breath of wind came down it. As we walked along, me with my skirts bunched in one hand to try to hold the hems clear of the muck, James with one hand firmly under my elbow, we could hear from each house, from each blocked doorway and unglazed uncurtained window, the crying of little babies and the moaning of old and ill men and women, and the ceaseless quarrels of those with breath and energy to be moved to anger rather than silent despair.

Jimmy glanced at James’s dark face. ‘The best we can afford,’ he said defensively. James nodded; he was not surprised.

We had only gone a little way before they started following us. At first people looked at us from doorways and from the windows, but then they fell in behind us, a murmuring crowd who
looked like they might heckle or stone or rob us. The grip on my arm tightened and James and Jimmy exchanged a look.

‘Nearly there,’ Jimmy said anxiously. ‘I oughtn’t to have asked you,’

I wanted to say that my place was there. If Wideacre children were living here, then I should know how they were living. But the smell of the street made me keep my mouth shut, and I did not feel brave and determined. I felt sick and I wished very much that I had not come.

‘Here,’ Jimmy said suddenly, and turned abruptly to the side.

It was not a doorway at all, but a basement window. Someone had built a little plank bridge down to it, but that was scarcely needed now; so much rubbish and dirt had been dropped from the street that if you had a strong stomach and stout boots, you could have walked from the lane to the window-sill.

‘Mind you don’t slip,’ James said, and walked ahead of me and put a hand out to me when he was half-way along the plank. We tumbled together into the room and I heard something scurry away at the noise we made. I blinked in the darkness, and then, as my eyes grew accustomed, I could see there were four people in the room.

A girl, about my age, lay sprawled on the floor, an old pelisse under her, a dirty greatcoat over her, a tin mug at her side. Her hair, which might have been copper if it had been washed, was half pinned, half tumbled down. Her eyes were heavy with dark paint around them and crusty with sleep. She was as thin as if she were starving and her cheeks were bright as bright with rouge.

‘This is Julie,’ Jimmy said, and anyone could have heard the love and pride in his voice.

‘Hello,’ I said quietly. ‘I am Julia Lacey.’ As I said it, I realized that we had the same name. She was probably a year younger than me and she had been called after me, in the tradition of Wideacre. She raised herself on her elbow and looked at James Fortescue and then at me without a change of expression. ‘Aye,’ she said, ‘Jimmy told us you’d come. I didn’t believe it.’ She reached for the tin mug and took a gulp from it.

This is Nat,’ Jimmy said.

A boy as black as an African slave got to his feet and came towards us. He was a little taller than Jimmy, but about the same age, I thought. In the darkness of the room I could scarce make out his features; all I could see were his shining eyes, bright blue, looking odd in that blackened face.

‘He’s a sweeper’s lad,’ Jimmy said. ‘He can’t talk because of the soot in his throat. He lost his voice – last winter, it was, wasn’t it, Nat?’ The boy nodded vigorously. A cloud of soot rose from his mop of hair. ‘But he’s getting too big,’ Jimmy said. ‘He can’t get up the chimney, whatever he does. Pretty soon he’ll have no work. Won’t even be able to beg without a voice.’

Nat nodded again, and then turned to a heap of paper on the floor. They were old newspapers, and I thought for a moment that he was going to show us some item of news. But he burrowed among them, and I realized they were his bedding. He came out with some small object cupped in his blackened palm and proffered it to me.

‘It’s his flint,’ Jimmy said in explanation. ‘When they took him from Acre, his ma gave him a flint off the common to remember his home by. D’you know flints like that? Flints like that on the common?’

I held the sharp little stone in my hand and closed my palm on it to keep the tears out of my eyes and out of my voice. ‘Yes, I do,’ I said. It was white on the outside, like a shell, and dark crimson and shiny inside, a hard little keepsake to carry for years. I gave it carefully back to him. ‘What is his family?’ I asked.

‘He’s the son of Tom Brewer,’ Jimmy said. ‘His pa used to work in the Midhurst breweries until they laid him off because of him living in Acre. Are they still there?’

I glanced at Nat. He looked indifferent, as if he had learned long ago that his family had surrendered him to the greater strength of the legal authorities and that he should surrender to them.

‘They are,’ I said. I remembered the cottage under the falling
spire. ‘They have a new cottage in Acre,’ I said. ‘It is being built now. And at home you have two little sisters and a new brother.’

The sooty head nodded, suggesting the news was of interest, but not of vital importance.

A movement in the corner of the room caught my eye.

‘That’s Rosie Dench,’ said Jimmy. ‘She’s sick again.’

I went cautiously towards the heap on the floor, and then I stopped by her. At her head, on a sheet of startling whiteness in that grime-encrusted room, was an exquisite pair of gloves covered in embroidery, with a great full-blown pink rose coiling around the wrist and around the fingers of the glove. The work was some of the finest I had ever seen.

‘What’s this?’ I asked. ‘It’s beautiful.’

‘It’s my work,’ she said hoarsely. She raised her head a little from the cloth under her head. Her face was very pale and her lips red from the sores around them. ‘When the light is a little brighter, I’ll do some more. I gets paid for them; they sell them in Mrs Williams’s millinery shop. They pays me well for them too ‘cause I make ’em up as I sew. I don’t need a pattern drawed for me.’ She stopped to cough and she turned her head away from the spotless cloth and the exquisite glove. She coughed into a corner of the rags that were covering her, and in the gloom I could see that her spittle was dark.

‘I know that shop,’ I said. I had thought it too dear, and Mama and I had gone elsewhere for gloves. They had been selling them at five pounds a pair. ‘You could buy a month’s work from a ploughing team for that,’ I had protested. Mama had laughed at the comparison, but we had bought our gloves in a cheaper shop.

‘Five shillin’s, they pays me!’ she said with pride. ‘Five whole shillin’s. And if the light is good, I can do a pair in three weeks’ working.’

I said nothing. I said absolutely nothing. I looked from the exquisite glove to the white face of the Acre girl, and suddenly the embroidered rose did not look beautiful any more. It looked like a parasite growing over the glove, feeding on her pallor and hunger and ill health.

‘Are you one of the Acre Dench family?’ I asked softly. ‘Clary Dench is one of my best friends.’

‘Aye,’ she said, ‘Clary is my half-sister. Her and me have the same pa, but he never married my ma. When she died, I used to live with Clary’s ma, in the cottage at the end of the lane. But when Mr Blithe came, they had to let me go with him. There were too many of us to keep fed. I don’t blame them for it. Besides, he’d have had the law on them. The parish overseer said all the children he wanted had to go.’

‘I’ve come to take you home,’ I said. ‘Acre is different now. They’re getting it back to work. Ralph Megson has come home and he is managing it for my uncle, John MacAndrew. We will make a profit on the crops next year and Acre will have a share of the profit – not just wages, but fair shares. I wrote to Ralph Megson last night to tell him I had met Jimmy. May I write today and tell him that you will come home?’

She glanced sideways at the gloves. Td have to finish them first,’ she said. ‘But then I’d go.’

‘Finish them!’ I exclaimed. ‘I’ll take them back to the shop for you myself. Why should you finish them when you are so ill and so poorly paid?’

‘I owe,’ she said.

I stared at her blankly.

‘They pays me a pair behind,’ she said. ‘And I had to borrow from them to buy my own silks and needles. Aye, and pins. If I don’t finish the work and take it back, they’d have me for stealing the goods.’

I was speechless. I looked around for James.

‘I think we can make that all right,’ he said gently. ‘If you would like Miss Lacey and me to take the gloves back to the shop for you as they are, we could discharge your debt.’

I was about to protest, but James shot me a quick frown which warned me to be silent.

‘If it can be done,’ she said hesitantly.

‘Yes, it can,’ James said firmly. ‘And if the shop owner – Mrs Williams, is it? – is disappointed at losing such a good worker,
well, it matters little, for you will never work for her again. You will be in Wideacre with your friends.’

She nodded her head, and dropped back. She had been pale when we started talking, but she was deathly white now.

‘I will write, then,’ I said, looking around and speaking to them all. ‘But while we are waiting for a reply, we must find somewhere for you to live where you will all be more comfortable. And Rosie should see a doctor.’

Jimmy and Nat were looking at me with hard sharp looks, wondering if I would keep my word.

‘May I make some arrangements for a lodging-house?’ I asked.

They nodded, wordless.

‘I will go and see what I can do, and then I will come back. Will you still be in this afternoon?’ I asked.

‘Nat will be at work,’ Jimmy said, ‘but Rosie and Julie and me will be here. Julie and me work at nights.’

‘I will be back before dinner,’ I promised. ‘I brought you some money to buy your breakfasts.’ I had put half a crown in the pocket of my jacket and I put my hand in. The pocket was empty.

James shook his head resignedly. ‘I didn’t see a thing,’ he said. ‘It was quickly done, whoever did it.’ He patted the inner jacket of his coat. ‘I brought half a crown in case you had no money with you, Julia.’ He handed it to Jimmy. ‘Bread,’ he said. ‘And milk, especially for Rosie. No gin this morning.’

Jimmy grinned; Nat’s eyes were fixed on the coin.

‘We’ll be back this afternoon,’ I said. I picked up the gloves, wrapped them in the clean cloth, and turned for the half-window and the rickety plank.

The smell of the street was almost sweet after the fetid darkness of the tiny room. The crowd which had followed us had dispersed. James and I exchanged one look and then set off down the mire of the lane to where his phaeton and’ groom and horses were waiting at the fish market.