The Forgotten Garden (17 page)

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Eliza nodded soberly, aware, though she wasn’t sure how, of having received a special confidence.

‘The brooch is worth a lot of money, but I have never been able to bring myself to sell it. I have fallen victim, time and again, to my sentimentality, but that should not stop you.’

‘Mother?’

‘I am not well, my child. Soon it will fall to you to look after Sammy and yourself. It may become necessary to sell the brooch.’

‘Oh no, Mother—’

‘It may become necessary, and it will be your decision to make. Do not let my reluctance guide you, do you hear?’

‘Yes, Mother.’

‘But if you do need to sell it, Eliza, be careful how you do so. It must not be sold officially, there can be no record.’

‘Why not?’

Mother looked at her and Eliza recognised the look. She herself had given it to Sammy many times when deciding how honest to be.

‘Because my family would find out.’ Eliza was silent; Mother’s family, along with her past, was rarely spoken of. ‘They will have reported it stolen—’

Eliza’s brows shot up.

‘—Erroneously, my child, for it is mine. I was given it by my mother on the occasion of my sixteenth birthday, it was in my family long before that.’

‘But if it’s yours, Mother, why can no one know you have it?’

‘Such a sale would reveal our whereabouts, and that cannot happen.’

She took Eliza’s hands, eyes wide, face pale and weak from the effort of speaking. ‘Do you understand?’

Eliza nodded, she understood. That is, she sort of understood.

Mother was worried about the Bad Man, the one she’d been warning them about all their lives. Who could be anywhere, lurking behind corners, waiting to catch them. Eliza had always loved the stories, though Mother never went into sufficient detail to assuage her curiosity. It was left to Eliza to embellish Mother’s warnings, to give the man a glass eye, and a basket of snakes, and a lip that curled when he sneered.

‘Shall I fetch you some medicine, Mother?’

‘Good girl, Eliza, you’re a good girl.’

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Eliza placed the clay pot on the bed beside Mother and fetched the little bottle of laudanum. When she returned, Mother reached out to stroke again the strand of long hair that had unravelled from Eliza’s plait.

‘Look after Sammy,’ she said. ‘And take care yourself. Always remember, with a strong enough will, even the weak can wield great power. You must be brave when I . . . if anything should happen to me.’

‘Of course, Mother, but nothing will happen to you.’ Eliza didn’t believe this and neither did Mother. Everybody knew what happened to people who got the consumption.

Mother managed a sip of medicine then leaned back against her pillow, exhausted by the effort. Her red hair spread out beside her, revealing her pale neck with its single scar, the fine slice that never faded and had first inspired Eliza’s tale of Mother’s encounter with the Ripper. Another of the tales she never let Mother hear.

With her eyes still closed, Mother spoke softly, in short, fast sentences: ‘My Eliza, I say this but once. If he finds you and you need to escape, then, and only then, take down the pot. Don’t go to Christie’s, don’t go to any of the big auction houses. They have records. Go around the corner and ask at Mr Baxter’s house. He’ll tell you how to find Mr John Picknick. Mr Picknick will know what to do.’ Her eyelids quivered with the strain of so much speech. ‘Do you understand?’

Eliza nodded.

‘Do you understand?’

‘Yes, Mother, I understand.’

‘Until such time, forget that it exists. Do not touch it, do not show it to Sammy, do not tell a soul. And Eliza?’

‘Yes, Mother?’

‘Always watch for the man of whom I speak.’

c

And Eliza had been good to her word. For the most part. She’d taken the pot down only twice, and then merely to look. To float her fingers over the top of the brooch, just as Mother had done, to feel its magic, its inestimable power, before sealing the lid quickly and carefully with candle wax, and stowing it back in place.

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And though she took it down today, it wasn’t to look at Mother’s mourning brooch. For Eliza had made her own addition to the clay pot. Inside was her own treasure, her own contingency for the future.

She plucked out the little leather pouch and held it tightly in her palm. Drew strength from its solidity. It was a trinket Sammy had found in the street and given her. Some wealthy child’s plaything, dropped and forgotten, found and revived. Eliza had kept it hidden from the first. She knew if the Swindells saw it, their eyes would light up and they’d insist on putting it downstairs in the rag and bottle shop.

And Eliza wanted the pouch like she’d never wanted anything before.

It had been a gift and it was hers. There weren’t many things she could say that about.

It was some weeks before she finally found a use for it, as a hiding place for her secret coins, the ones the Swindells knew nothing about, paid to her by Matthew Rodin, the rat-catcher. Eliza had a skill for rat-catching, though she didn’t like to do it. The rats were just trying to stay alive after all, best as they could in a city that favoured neither the meek nor the mild. She tried not to think about what Mother would say—she’d always had a soft spot for animals—instead Eliza reminded herself that she didn’t have much choice. If she and Sammy were to stand a chance, they needed coin of their own, secret coin that passed beneath the Swindells’ notice.

Eliza sat on the edge of the hearth, clay pot on her lap, and dusted her sooty hands on the underside of her dress. It wouldn’t do to wipe them where Mrs Swindell could see. No good would come once her suspicious nose was set to twitching.

When Eliza was satisfied her hands were clean, she opened the pouch, loosened the soft silken ribbon and gently widened the opening.

Peeked inside.

Rescue yourself, Mother had said, and look after Sammy. And that was just what Eliza intended to do. Inside the pouch there were four threepenny bits. Two more and she’d have enough to buy fifty oranges.

That was all they needed to start out as orange-sellers. The coins they made would buy more oranges and then they’d have their own money, their own little business. They’d be free to find a new place to live, where they were safe, without the watchful, vengeful Swindell eyes 115

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upon them. The ever-looming threat of being turned over to the Do-Gooders and sent to the workhouse—

Footsteps on the landing.

Eliza pushed the coins back into the pouch, tightened its neck and poked it inside the pot. Heart thumping, she slotted the pot back inside the chimney; it could be sealed later. Just in time, she jumped clear and perched, a model of innocence, on the end of the rickety bed.

The door opened and Sammy appeared, still black with soot.

Standing in the doorframe, single candle flickering limply in his hand, he looked so thin Eliza thought it a trick of the light. She smiled at him and he came towards her, reached inside his pocket and retrieved a small potato sneaked from Mrs Swindell’s larder.

‘Sammy!’ Eliza scolded, taking the soft spud. ‘You know she counts them. She’ll figure it was you that took it.’

Sammy shrugged, started rinsing his face in the bowl of water by the bed.

‘Thank you,’ she said, stashing the potato in her mending basket when he wasn’t watching. She’d return it in the morning.

‘It’s getting cold,’ she said, taking her pinafore off so she wore only her underdress. ‘It’s early this year.’ She climbed into bed, shivered beneath the thin grey blanket.

Down to his undershirt and shorts, Sammy hopped in beside her.

His feet were freezing and she tried to warm them with her own.

‘Shall I tell you a story?’

She felt his head moving, his hair brushing her cheek as he nodded.

And so she launched into her favourite tale: ‘Once upon a time, when the night was cold and dark and the streets were empty, and her twin babies were pushing and squirming inside her belly, a young princess heard footfalls behind her, knew instantly whose wicked tread they were . . .’

She’d been telling it for years, though not when Mother could hear.

Mother would have said Eliza was upsetting Sammy with her tall tales.

She didn’t understand that children aren’t frightened by stories; that their lives are full of far more frightening things than those contained in fairytales.

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Her brother’s shallow breaths had become regular and Eliza knew that he had fallen asleep. She stopped her story and reached to take his hand in hers. It was so cold, so bony, she felt a flutter of panic in her stomach. She tightened her grasp, listening to him breathe. ‘Everything will be all right, Sammy,’ she whispered, thinking of the leather pouch, the money inside. ‘I’ll make sure of it, I promise.’

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15

London, 2005

London, England, 2005

Ben’s daughter Ruby was waiting for Cassandra when she arrived at Heathrow. A plump woman in her late fifties, with a face that glowed and short silver-grey hair that stood to resolute attention. She had an energy that seemed to charge the air around her; the type of person other people noticed. Before Cassandra could express surprise that this stranger was at the airport to greet her, Ruby had seized Cassandra’s suitcase, put a fleshy arm around her, and steered them both out through the glass doors of the airport and into the fume-filled carpark.

Her car was a battered old hatch, its interior suffused with the scent of musk and the chemical approximation of a flower Cassandra couldn’t name. When they were both belted in, Ruby plucked a bag of liquorice allsorts from her handbag and offered them to Cassandra who took a striped cube of brown, white and black.

‘I’m addicted,’ said Ruby, popping a pink one into her mouth and tucking it in her cheek. ‘Seriously addicted. Sometimes I can’t finish the one in my mouth fast enough to move on to the next.’ She chewed fiercely for a moment, then swallowed. ‘Ah well. Life’s too short for moderation, wouldn’t you say?’

Despite the late hour the roads were alive with cars. They sped along the night-time motorway, bow-necked street lamps casting orange glows onto the bitumen below. While Ruby drove quickly, making sharp jabs at the brake only when absolutely necessary, gesticulating and shaking her head at other drivers who dared get in her way, Cassandra stared out the window, mentally tracing the concentric rings of London’s architectural movements. She liked to 118

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think of cities that way. A drive from edge to centre was like taking a time capsule into the past. The modern airport hotels and wide, smooth arterial roads morphed into pebble-dashed houses, then mansion blocks, then, finally, the dark heart of Victorian terraces.

As they drew closer to the centre of London, Cassandra figured she should tell Ruby the name of the hotel she’d booked for the two nights before she left for Cornwall. She fossicked in her bag for the plastic folder in which she was keeping her travel documents. ‘Ruby,’

she said, ‘are we near Holborn?’

‘Holborn? No. Other side of town. Why?’

‘That’s where my hotel is. I can catch a taxi, of course, I don’t expect you to drive me all the way.’

Ruby looked at her just long enough for Cassandra to worry that no one’s eyes were on the road. ‘Hotel? I don’t think so.’ She changed gear, braked just in time to avoid collision with a blue van in front.

‘You’re staying with me, I won’t hear otherwise.’

‘Oh no,’ said Cassandra, the flash of blue metal still loud in her mind. ‘I couldn’t, it’s too much trouble.’ She began to relax her grip on the car door handle. ‘Besides, it’s too late to cancel my booking.’

‘Never too late. I’ll do it for you.’ Ruby turned to Cassandra again, seatbelt squeezing her large breast so that it almost leapt from her shirt. ‘And it’s no trouble. I’ve made up a bed and I’m looking forward to your visit.’ She grinned. ‘Dad’d skin me alive if he thought I’d sent you off to a hotel!’

When they reached South Kensington, Ruby reversed the car into a minuscule space and Cassandra held her breath, silenced by admiration of the other woman’s lusty confidence.

‘Here we are then.’ Ruby plucked the keys from the ignition and gestured towards a white terrace on the other side of the road. ‘Home sweet home.’

The flat was tiny. Tucked deep within the Edwardian house, up two flights of stairs and behind a yellow door. It had only one bedroom, a little shower recess and toilet, and a kitchenette attached to the sitting room. Ruby had set up the sofa bed for Cassandra.

‘Only three star, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘I’ll make it up to you at breakfast.’

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Cassandra glanced uncertainly at the tiny kitchenette and Ruby laughed so that her lime green blouse shook. She wiped her eyes. ‘Oh Lord, no! I don’t mean to cook. Why put oneself through the agony when someone else can do it so much better? I’ll take you round the corner to a café instead.’ She flicked the switch on the kettle. ‘Cuppa?’

Cassandra smiled weakly. What she really wanted to do was let her facial muscles relax out of this pleased-to-meet-you smile. It may have been the fact of having been so far above the earth’s surface for such a long time, or just her usual mildly antisocial tendencies, but she was using every ounce of energy to keep up a front of function. A cup of tea would mean at least another twenty minutes of smiling and nodding and, god help her, finding answers to Ruby’s constant questions. She thought briefly, with guilty longing, of the hotel room on the other side of town. Then she noticed Ruby was already dunking twin teabags into twin teacups. ‘Tea’d be great.’