Tilly True (20 page)

‘I know. It was Mrs Mabb, the woman who was housekeeper to the last vicar. She still cleans the church, but she is so old I was afraid to ask her to do much and she smells like a dead fish. She only has one good eye and I can't tell if she is looking at me when I talk to her. I'm a bit scared of her, to tell the truth.'

‘Lucky you found me then,' Tilly said, warming the teapot with water from the kettle. ‘I'll soon get it sorted, but I will need a bit of help. There ain't nothing that a bit of hot water, soda and elbow grease can't sort out.'

‘I'm afraid that you'll have to deal with Mrs Mabb. Francis won't let me dismiss her because he says she served the old vicar faithfully and she needs the money.'

‘Leave old one-eye to me. I'm sure we'll get along just fine.'

‘You're a wonder. I'm so glad you're here, Tilly.'

Spooning tea leaves into the pot, Tilly smiled; it was good to feel needed and, in spite of the dire surroundings, she felt her spirits lifting. ‘Where's the Reverend? I'm sure he could do with a cup of tea.'

Harriet's hand flew to her mouth. ‘I'd completely forgotten Francis. He's in his study writing Sunday's sermon. I'll take it to him, Tilly, and I'll tell him you're here. I'm sure he'll be delighted.'

As Harriet left the room clutching the only matching cup and saucer in the house, Tilly couldn't help wondering if the Reverend would be so happy if he knew the truth about her. It might not have been her fault, but after last night she must count as one of his fallen women. If the worst happened she could be in the same position as Emily, in the pudding club, but without a man who would make an honest woman of her. Suddenly Tilly saw Emily's dilemma in a different light and she knew that she had been hard on her younger sister. Sitting down at the table with a cracked mug of tea in front of her, she made up her mind to make up her quarrel with Emily. Family must stick together in times of need.

She looked up as the door opened and Francis hurried in, followed by Harriet. His high forehead was puckered into frown lines and there were dark shadows under his eyes as if he had not slept well in weeks, but his lips curved into a smile and his eyes crinkled at the corners when he saw her.

‘My dear Miss True, I can't tell you how happy I am to see you.'

Getting to her feet, Tilly bobbed a curtsey. ‘Likewise, I'm sure, your worship.'

‘I've been trying to convince myself that all this has been a test of my faith,' Francis said, putting his arm around Harriet's shoulders. ‘And if it were just myself in question, I think I could bear it, but I hate to see poor Hattie suffer on my account. You're a gift from God, Tilly. A gift from God.'

Putting everything behind her, Tilly set to work to make the vicarage habitable. Her first hurdle was to get on good terms with the formidable Mrs Mabb, who came in every morning armed with a mop and bucket and then sat by the fire drinking tea until she felt like pushing the dirt around the floor and leaving it in a heap under the table. She had a habit of squinting with her one good eye at anyone who had the temerity to approach her, and smacking her toothless gums together, which alarmed Harriet and sent her scurrying from the kitchen. Tilly was used to the bullying ways of domestic tyrants and she soon realised that Mrs Mabb was using her age and infirmity to mask the fact that she was basically a lazy old slut. As the Reverend Francis could not bring himself to sack the old woman, Tilly set about finding a way to keep her civil and to get a modicum of work from her. On their first day together, Tilly discovered that Mrs Mabb had two weaknesses. One was for snuff, which she took with a great deal of snorting and sneezing into a ragged handkerchief, and the second was that she wanted to talk endlessly about the good old days when the last vicar ruled his congregation with threats of hellfire and damnation. With careful management of the housekeeping money, Tilly kept Mrs Mabb supplied with enough snuff to blow up Woolwich Arsenal, and she encouraged her to talk about old times even though she rarely listened to a word.

Enlisting the help of two local women whom she found by dint of advertising in the local shop window, Tilly set them to work sweeping, scrubbing and cleaning windows until the vicarage smelt strongly of Jeyes' disinfectant and Calvert's carbolic soap. Mrs Mabb made it clear she did not approve of such goings on; cleanliness might be next to godliness, but it would take a peck of dirt to kill you.

Tilly's next project was to persuade Francis to purchase a kitchen range from a second-hand dealer. Once this was installed, it would be possible to heat pans of water and to cook proper meals. It seemed that Francis and Hattie had been living mostly on bread and cheese, and so had the mice and rats. From the verger, a retired clockmaker who lived above the grocer's shop, Tilly borrowed a tabby tomcat that had done battle so many times it had lost half its tail and it had only half an ear. Within a week, the rodents were either eaten or had taken flight, making it possible to store food in the larder. Mrs Mabb and the cat hated each other on sight, hissing and spitting at one another in territorial battles that usually ended with Mrs Mabb shooing the cat out into the yard on the end of the mop. But, Tilly was glad to see, the cat had a way of getting its own back by lying in wait and springing out from behind Mrs Mabb's chair to bite her skinny ankles as she sat by the fire.

After less than a month, and almost without realising it, Tilly had taken over running the household and had become more of a companion to Harriet than a servant. They spent their evenings sitting together in the parlour sewing curtains and chatting, while Francis locked himself away in his study, writing his sermons or reading. Harriet was too nervous to go out unaccompanied, even in daytime, and so Tilly did the shopping while Harriet either stayed at home, keeping well away from Mrs Mabb, or accompanied Francis on his parish visits.

Tilly was happy enough, but she missed her family and she made up her mind to take the first opportunity to go and see them. She had been planning her visit for weeks, but there always seemed to be so much to do in the vicarage. Then there was Barney. Try as she might, she could not entirely eradicate him from her thoughts. She did not want to believe that he had abandoned her in a brothel without a thought for her wellbeing. She lived in the hope of receiving news of him, and perhaps an apology or at least an explanation as to why he had left her to Jessie's not very tender care. Each morning when she collected the post from the doormat, she flicked through the correspondence searching for an envelope written in his bold hand, but she was always disappointed. She never mentioned this to Harriet, who seemed to be quite used to her brother disappearing for long periods of time. As for Francis, he seemed to inhabit a world that was to be found only between the covers of his books and, when at home, he spent most of his time sequestered in his study.

It was May and spring was giving way to summer, but it was almost impossible to detect the change in the seasons in the back streets of Wapping. If a blade of grass dared push its head through the cracks in the pavements it was soon blackened and shrivelled by the putrid air. Only the boldest sparrows and pigeons skittered amongst the detritus in the gutters, pecking for bits of food, prey to the feral cats that crept around in the shadows, ready to pounce. The vicarage was now in a reasonable state of cleanliness, but even the most thorough scrubbing could not entirely eliminate the smell of damp rot and decay. With a minimum of furniture and without the benefit of carpets or even linoleum, the house was comfortless and draughty.

Money was always in short supply, and by dint of nagging Harriet persuaded Francis to take her on a visit to Palgrave Manor. She confided in Tilly that she hoped to persuade their elder brother, Dolph, to part with just a little of his inheritance so that they might achieve a more comfortable standard of living. When they left for the station Harriet was bubbling with excitement, but Tilly thought that Francis looked more like a man condemned to the guillotine than someone anticipating a pleasant visit to his ancestral home.

Seizing the opportunity of a day with little to do, Tilly decided that it was time to go home to see Ma and the nippers, and to make her peace with Emily. Having left Mrs Mabb in the kitchen with a quarter of an ounce of snuff and a promise of more when she returned, together with a packet of broken biscuits to dunk in her tea, Tilly gave her strict instructions to keep the fire in the range going so that the oxtail and vegetables would be nicely braised in time for the evening meal. Tilly put on a bonnet that Hattie had given her, saying that it was too old-fashioned for her taste, and a shawl that had been discarded for the same reason. She was about to leave the house when the doorbell rang.

Expecting to find a parishioner on the doorstep, or a vagrant begging for food, Tilly set her face in a smile and opened the door.

Her smile froze. ‘Clem!'

Dragging off his cap, Clem shuffled his feet, smiling but looking a bit uncertain. ‘Miss Tilly, I come to fetch you.'

‘You came to fetch me?' Tilly stared at him uncomprehending. ‘But no one knows I'm here. You can't have.'

‘A certain gent called Pitcher told me where to find you. I wouldn't have come but for Miss Emily. She's having her baby and it ain't going too well.'

‘Heavens above, why didn't you say so at once?' Grabbing her purse, Tilly left the house, locking the door behind her. ‘I was going home today anyway.'

‘I got me dad's cart,' Clem said. ‘He's at your house, pacing the floor and in a terrible state.'

‘I'm sure poor Emmie is in a worse way and all because of him.' Tilly climbed up onto the cart without waiting for Clem to help her. ‘Hurry, please.'

Leaping onto the seat beside her, Clem picked up the reins and urged Neptune into a brisk trot.

Glancing at his straight profile as he concentrated on the road ahead, Tilly was eaten up with curiosity. ‘How do you know Pitcher?'

‘It would be a job not to know the bloke. He's always poking around the docks and the wharves looking for missing people amongst the bodies what we pulls out of the Thames. I been working alongside your dad for the past couple of months and Pitcher come up to us trying to touch your dad for a bit of the ready. Seems like he's got it in for you in some way.'

Fingers of panic closed in on Tilly's heart, squeezing it until she felt faint. ‘What did he say? What did he tell me dad?'

‘He said you'd been working in a knocking-shop, but your dad didn't believe him and was ready to chuck him into the river.'

‘I hope he did. That Pitcher is a mean brute.'

‘No, in the end your dad just walked away. He's a good man is Ned. Anyway, I slipped Pitcher a couple of bob and got this address off him. I knew nothing good would come of you lodging in that place, but I don't understand how you got on the wrong side of Pitcher.'

‘That's none of your business, Clem Tuffin.'

‘If me dad marries your sister, and he says he will, then we'll be relations of sorts, so it is my business. I want to know what happened in that place.'

‘Whatever Pitcher told you it ain't true, apart from me getting a position as companion to Miss Harriet Palgrave. I'm a lady now.'

Clem turned to her, scowling. ‘He did say that your fine lawyer gent got himself into debt and had to leave the country. What sort of bloke leaves an innocent young girl in a brothel?'

‘I don't want to talk about it and I ain't . . . I mean I'm not having this conversation,' Tilly said, wrapping her shawl more tightly around her and hanging onto the seat as Clem allowed Neptune to take a corner at what was for him a breakneck speed.

‘You might have learnt to talk like a lady, but you can't change what you are, Tilly.'

‘I'll have you know my family are respectable,' Tilly fired back at him, ‘not like your blooming father who gets little girls in trouble, kidnaps women and beats up on them. I'd be ashamed to call myself a Tuffin.'

Turning his head away, Clem said nothing and was silent until they arrived at the corner of Red Dragon Passage. Without waiting to see if Clem was following her or not, she leapt off the cart and ran down the narrow street. She burst into the sitting room, coming face to face with Bert.

‘Thank Gawd you come,' Bert said, tears trickling down his lined face and dripping unchecked onto his necktie. ‘She's been asking for you.'

Staring at Bert, Tilly could hardly believe that this was the same man who had abducted, beaten and attempted to rape her. He seemed to have shrunk several inches in height, and as he brushed his hand across his eyes she saw that his fingernails were bitten to the quick and bleeding.

‘You really do care for her?'

‘I does. I does – and my little Emily is dying, all on account of me.'

‘Nonsense,' Tilly said, her stomach clenching as though she had just missed a step on the stairs. ‘She's having a baby, that's all.'

A wild, agonised scream from upstairs made them both jump.

‘And it's killing her, I tells you. This has been going on for two whole days. My little Emmie is dying. I'm going to lose her just as I lost my Mary.'

Chapter Ten

Taking the stairs two at a time, Tilly followed the screams that led her into her parents' bedroom. Her mother was there at the beside together with Mrs Brown from across the street, who had fourteen children of her own and who, when not in labour herself, had delivered most of the babies in Red Dragon Passage and the surrounding streets. Nellie was staring helplessly at Emily, who writhed about on the bloodstained sheets, shrieking and moaning and refusing to listen to Mrs Brown's instructions to keep calm and push.