Tilly True (19 page)

Tilly was not going to be beaten for want of a key and she went to the window, threw up the sash and leaned out, looking down into the area and judging the drop. It must, she thought, be all of fifteen feet and to fall that far would cause serious injury. Craning her neck towards the front steps, she saw that the narrow ledge extended several inches beyond the window. Without stopping to think, Tilly tossed her bundle over the railings onto the pavement, and climbed out on the ledge. She must not look down, she told herself as she clung to the sash. She must keep calm. The chill morning air was making her shiver, or maybe it was simply the fear of heights. Tilly edged towards the end of the windowsill and, taking a deep breath, she reached across the chasm to clutch the iron railings at the side of the steps, but her cold fingers could not get a grip on the metalwork. Shaking with fear and frustration, Tilly tried again; this time she managed to hold on to the top rail. Spread-eagled against the brickwork, she squeezed the toe of her boot in between two iron railings. Now she must let go of the window in order to make a dive to safety, but it was easier said than done. Sweat was trickling down her forehead and into her eyes; she must do it now before her trembling legs gave way beneath her. Desperation won, and Tilly flung herself at the railings, tearing her hand on the spiked top but clinging on somehow. Sobbing with relief, she made her way hand over hand, her booted feet scrabbling for a toehold until she reached the gate that led to the area steps. As she put her weight on it, the gate swung towards the wall of the house, leaving Tilly dangling over the drop. Fighting panic, she pushed her foot against the lichen-covered wall and the gate clanged back against the post. With her feet on the top step, Tilly could have cried with relief at the feel of firm ground, but there was no time for tears. Stepping out onto the pavement she picked up her bundle.

‘Well, that were a pretty sight, miss. A regular little mountaineer, that's what you are.'

Tilly spun round to see Pitcher barring her way. She tried to dodge him, but he had her by the scruff of her neck. ‘Let me go,' Tilly cried, lashing out with her fists and feet. ‘I ain't going back in there.'

‘That's up to her, not me.' Dragging Tilly up the steps, Pitcher tugged on the doorbell.

‘Let me go or I'll tell Mr Barney.'

‘You'll have to find him first.' Pitcher tightened his grip. ‘Don't make it hard for me, miss. I'm just doing me job. I don't want to hurt you so you'd best stop wriggling.'

‘Help,' Tilly screamed. ‘I'm being kidnapped. Help me.'

A top window opened and Jessie stuck her head out. ‘What's going on, Pitcher?'

‘Caught a chicken attempting to fly the coop, Missis.'

‘Hang on to her, Pitcher. I'll be right down.'

‘You can't do this to me. I won't go back in there.' Somehow, Tilly managed to wedge her foot in between Pitcher's legs and he stumbled backwards against the railings, momentarily loosening his grip. With a supreme effort, she broke free and ran down the steps, but with surprising agility for a big man, Pitcher leapt after her and caught her before she had got halfway down the street. By this time, Tilly's screams and Pitcher's cursing and swearing had attracted some attention, and people hurrying to work had ventured into the cul-de-sac to see what all the noise was about.

‘Please,' Tilly shouted. ‘Someone help me.'

‘What's she done, guv?' A drayman delivering barrels to a pub at the end of the road stopped working and came towards them.

‘Mind your own business, mate.' Pitcher fisted at the man, who backed away holding up his hands.

‘All right! I was just asking.'

Throwing Tilly over his shoulder, Pitcher carted her back to the house, where Jessie stood at the top of the steps, wrapped in a lacy peignoir with her hair tied up in rags. Even from her upside-down position, Tilly could see that she was furious.

‘Bloody little baggage. Get her inside quick, Pitcher.'

Beating her fists against Pitcher's thighs, Tilly kicked out with her feet, catching him in the windpipe and making him choke. Coughing and spluttering, he dropped her, and she fell to the ground in a flurry of petticoats.

Jessie started down the steps but stopped as she saw a hansom cab pull up outside the house. The door opened and a young woman leapt out. ‘Tilly! Oh, my God, it is you.'

Tilly blinked hard, thinking that she must be dreaming. ‘Miss Hattie?'

Dropping down on her knees, Harriet wrapped her arms round Tilly. ‘What have they done to you? Are you all right, my dear?'

‘I am now.' Scrambling to her feet, Tilly shook her fist at Jessie. ‘I'll see you in hell, you wicked old bag.' Turning on Pitcher, she narrowed her eyes. ‘And you'll be looking for a job when I tells Mr Barney what you done to me.'

‘Never mind them, dear,' Harriet said, placing her arm round Tilly's shoulders and guiding her to the cab. ‘Barney will see that they get their just deserts. Let's get away from this dreadful place.' Helping Tilly inside, she tapped on the roof. ‘Drive on, cabby.'

As the cab lurched forward, Tilly had the satisfaction of seeing Jessie, not looking at her best without her face paint and her corsets, berating Pitcher who stood, cap in hand, staring down at his boots.

‘You look frozen, my dear,' Harriet said, taking Tilly's shawl from the bundle and wrapping it around her shoulders. ‘What have they done to you?'

Touching her sore eye, Tilly managed a wobbly smile. ‘I expect I'll live. Just tell me how you knew I was here. It's a blooming miracle.'

‘Barney's got himself into a bit of a mess. He sent me a letter from Dover telling me very little except that he had to go away for a while, and he asked me to make sure you were all right. He gave me this address and I came, thank goodness, just at the right moment.'

‘He did?' She had blamed everything on Barney; the protective shell that had hardened around Tilly's heart cracked just a little. ‘He asked you to come for me?'

‘Oh, Tilly, he should never have taken you there in the first place. I can't imagine what you've been through.'

Staring at Harriet, hardly daring to believe her ears, it seemed to Tilly that the sun had suddenly appeared from behind louring storm clouds. Suddenly she felt like singing. ‘But he didn't just leave me there?'

‘No, of course not. He simply couldn't have known what sort of place it was.' Harriet leaned closer, touching Tilly's cheek. ‘My poor Tilly, you've got a frightful black eye and there are bruises all round your neck and your hand is bleeding. Who did this to you?'

Looking into Harriet's innocent eyes, so similar in shape and colour to Barney's, Tilly couldn't bring herself to tell the truth. A young lady brought up in a genteel manner would know nothing of the harsher side of life. Thinking quickly, Tilly leaned back against the squabs. At least she was safe now and the horror of last night was a painful, disgusting memory that she must push to the back of her mind or be driven mad. ‘Well, it was like this,' she said slowly, gradually warming to her theme. ‘Miss Jessie – that's the woman what owns the – the gentlemen's club – asked me to sit in the parlour and be sociable to the punters . . . I mean guests. Then, all of a sudden, that man you saw outside the house, he come in the worse for drink and accused Miss Dolly, that's one of the young lady hostesses, he accused her of flirting. He was hitting her and biffing her something cruel so I jumps up and tries to intervene but he turns on me.'

Harriet's eyes were saucer-like in her pale, oval face. ‘But didn't the other gentlemen try to stop him?'

‘They was a bit old, you know, a bit too doddery to do much good. Miss Jessie only has professional gents in her club, you know – judges and old toffs, that sort of thing.'

‘Well, it doesn't sound at all the sort of place for a young woman to be left in and I'll have a few words to say to Barney when I next see him. I think, Tilly,' Harriet dropped her voice to a whisper, ‘I think it might even be a house of ill-repute. I've heard of such places and I know that Francis visits them every so often, in order to save the poor fallen women's souls, of course.'

‘Of course,' Tilly said, nodding. Somehow, even with her vivid imagination, she could not see the Reverend Francis Palgrave having much success in Blossom Court.

‘Never mind all that now.' Harriet patted Tilly's hand. ‘I'm taking you home with me. We've moved into the vicarage but it's in a terrible state and I'm sure Francis will be delighted to employ someone we know and trust. That's if you're still looking for a position, Tilly.'

‘I am. Oh, yes, Miss Hattie. I am, definitely.'

Tilly was not quite so enthusiastic when she climbed out of the hansom cab; even the cabby looked a bit wary as he took the fare from Harriet, glancing this way and that as if he expected a bunch of ruffians to pounce on him. Almost before he had the coins in his leather pouch, he had flicked the whip and sent his horse off at a brisk trot. Looking around her, Tilly felt a cold shiver run up and down her spine as she realised that they were in the roughest area of Wapping, probably not very from the Tuffins' miserable home in Duck's Foot Lane.

The cabby had set them down outside the church and the vicarage that must, many centuries ago, have looked out onto a pleasant village green, but now the grime-encrusted buildings were marooned in a sea of industrial squalor. A network of mean streets and alleyways had engulfed the churchyard that was surrounded on all sides by warehouses, timber merchants, chandlers, seamen's missions, pubs and pie shops, ropemakers, sailmakers and brothels. The air was thick with smoke and chemical fumes, yellow with sulphur, and soot from factory chimneys drifted down in large flakes to envelop everything in a black mantle.

Glancing at Harriet, Tilly saw her own feelings mirrored in her expression and she patted her hand. ‘Chin up, Miss Hattie. It could be worse.'

‘I don't know how. This is a truly dreadful place.' Picking up her skirts, Harriet hurried up the path, fumbling in her purse for the latchkey. She opened the door and went inside, beckoning Tilly to follow her. She stood in the middle of the entrance hall with her arms outstretched. ‘Look around you, Tilly. Have you ever seen such a miserable place?'

Trying hard to find something good to say about the house, Tilly wrinkled her nose at the musty smell of decay. She could feel the chill rising up from the uneven flagstone floor and it was so gloomy they might have been in a cave. ‘It does need a bit of a scrub.'

Peeling off her gloves, Harriet shook her head. ‘It needs demolishing. It's absolutely frightful. The last incumbent had to be carried out in his coffin but it smells as though he's still here. I've hired women to scrub the floors and wash the paintwork but the house reeks of sick old man and I hate it, Tilly, I really hate it.' Covering her face with her hands, Harriet began to sob.

Thinking that if all she had to worry about was a bit of dirt and grime, Tilly decided that Hattie had had life a bit too easy for her own good. Shrugging off her shawl, she hung it on a peg. ‘Well, miss, crying won't help. There ain't nothing wrong with this place that can't be set to rights with a bit of elbow grease.'

‘Oh, Tilly. I'm so glad I found you.' Taking a hankie from her pocket, Harriet blew her nose and sniffed. ‘I'm no good at this sort of thing. I wasn't brought up to be a housekeeper. At Palgrave Manor we had servants to do absolutely everything.'

‘Lucky you.' Tilly bit her lip. That was no way to talk to an employer, but thankfully Harriet appeared to be too overwrought to notice. ‘Show me to the kitchen, Miss Hattie. One thing I am good at is housekeeping. I learned that from me mum and from Mrs Morris, the cook-general in Barbary Terrace.'

‘Tilly, you're an angel.'

‘Not so as you'd notice, miss.'

Entering the kitchen, Tilly felt her confidence waver. The house must have been built in the seventeenth century and, by the looks of things, the kitchen was in its original state. A desultory fire of green logs in the open hearth sent sparks snapping and smoke belching up into the beamed ceiling. The only means of cooking seemed to be a trivet and a blackened kettle hanging from a hook over the fire. A rectangular oak table in the centre of the room surrounded by six ladder-back chairs, and an oak dresser against one wall, were the only furnishings. The flagstone floor was slippery with grease and the small-paned windows were opaque with dirt. Tilly had never seen anything so awful since she had escaped from the Tuffins, but she was not going to admit this to Harriet, whose bottom lip was wobbling again as fresh tears sparkled on her eyelashes.

‘Isn't this dreadful? There's not even a tap or a sink indoors. We have to fetch water from a pump in the back yard. I haven't had a decent wash since we left Mrs Henge's boarding house and that was a horrible place. What shall we do?'

‘We'll have a cup of tea and then you can show me the rest of the house.'

Pulling out a chair, Tilly made Harriet sit down. Searching the kitchen, opening and closing doors, she discovered a cavernous larder where mice seemed to have gnawed their way through everything except a tin caddy filled with tea. Fighting her way through a veil of cobwebs, Tilly clicked her tongue against her teeth, shaking her head.

‘There is a pitcher of milk,' Harriet said, pointing to the dresser. ‘They bring it to the door in a churn. Although I can't think where anyone could keep a cow in this part of London, and the dairymaid has filthy hands and fingernails.'

‘I dunno who was supposed to scrub this place,' Tilly said, taking a teapot from the dresser. ‘But they was useless.'