Untitled (30 page)

   The widow flinches but she doesn't pull away. "You've had a terrible time of it," whispers Jane. "No one could expect more of you." She's not sure whether she's said the right thing. What is the right thing? Words that wrap themselves warmly around the widow might stop her crying, but if they are pulled too tight she'll close up into herself.

   Jane bends so close that her mouth is only inches from the widow's ear. "Ma'am? Maybe you could go home. Wouldn't that be better for you? To go back to your friends and your family? They'd take proper care of you, wouldn't they?"

   The widow lifts her head and takes a shuddering breath. Her mouth's wide open. Strands of saliva hang between her teeth, and her face is slick with tears. "I have no one," she announces. "Do—do you understand that? Now I have no one at all."

   Her head falls back and she lets out a wail. Jane hesitates, then she sits on the bed and pulls the widow into her arms. Her body is all bones, hard against her chest. Soon, though, the wailing softens, and the widow clings to her.

   She leans her head against the widow's. "Tell me, ma'am," she whispers. "Tell me how it is you're so on your own."

        
W
ith the telegram in one hand, Robert searches the house for Mina. He finds Sarah dusting in the study, Cartwright tidying the dining room, the widow sitting by the window in the drawing room, staring into the street. She jumps to her feet when he comes in, but he's startled too and shoves the telegram into his pocket, as though she'll be able to read it from across the room.

   "Excuse me," he mutters. "I thought Mina might be here."

   Her eyes look sore, as though she's been crying. "She's upstairs," she says.

   "Thank you." He retreats, faster than he should, his feet carrying him up to the bedrooms. But she is not in their bedroom, so he takes the narrow stairs up to the dim corridor that passes the servants' rooms. He goes to the end, knocks, and gently opens the door. Price's head turns, but Mina is not there either. "Sorry," he says, as though he has intruded, when, as he tells himself as he closes the door, Price had no reason to look so affronted. Whose house does she think it is?

   Belatedly he guesses where she must be: in his mother's room. Down the stairs he goes, Price's gaunt face floating before him in the half-light so that when he opens the door, the first thing he says to Mina is, "You really need to do something about that woman."

   Over the bed are strewn dresses and petticoats and even a couple of corsets. Mina, though, is at the dressing table, his mother's jewelry box open in front of her. She raises her eyebrows. "Price, darling?"

   "Of course, Price. There's nothing wrong with her. We've had the doctor out twice—how can it be her nerves? I thought women like her didn't
have
nerves."

   From one hand dangles a pearl necklace. She studies it for a moment, then sets it down on the table. "She has nowhere to go, and no prospects. I've given her warning that she must get up, but the doctor intervened. What can I do? I can hardly throw her out of the house in the state she's in."

   "She's worked herself up into it."

   She comes across the carpet to him. "Yes, she certainly has. But it doesn't make it any easier to put her out the door."

   He takes her in his arms though she's a little resistant. "She can't stay," he says softly. "She has nothing to do here, unless you take her on as your maid."

   She jerks her head back. "She might just as well look after Victoria—and Victoria is unlikely to protest."

   "Ah." He holds her out, at the ends of his arms. "But Victoria won't be with us much longer." He dips his hand into his pocket and pulls out the telegram. "See what's arrived? I've been all over the house looking for you."

   She takes it over to the window to read. He watches her head shift slightly, as though the only way to absorb the message is to force her eyes over its lines again and again. Then she raises her head, light glinting red in her hair. "They were never married!"

   "Cyril is nothing if not thorough. Not only can he find no record of a marriage between Henry and Victoria, he has not been able to trace Victoria Dawes. Other Dawes women, yes—but no V
ictoria
Dawes. No one has heard of the woman—it's quite extraordinary." He takes the telegram from her and reads it again. "I hope you weren't thinking of dividing up Mother's jewelry just yet."

   "Your mother left Price a brooch and a pearl necklace. As for Victoria—well, we'd need to get it all valued to divide everything equally. And that could take time, couldn't it?"

   "Oh yes," he says. "Quite some time, I imagine." He smiles. "In the meantime we must confront her. It would be easiest if she just renounced all claim on Henry's money and left. What else can she do?"

   "Yes," Mina says, "what else can she do?" Her smile, though, has a thinness to it that disturbs him. "Maybe she won't be got rid of so easily."

   "Then it will be a matter for the police."

Chapter 23

J
ane hurries along the street, her hands swinging back towards her body to touch her pocket and the letter inside. The afternoon is bitter. She bends her head against the sleet blowing into her face and only glances up when she has to, to see her way, to avoid dingy piles of snow, to slip past the few other people out this afternoon. Already her hands and face are burning from the cold, and under her boots the pavement is turning icy. She passes a hot-pie man, but she has no money. Not a single penny in her pocket.

   Of all the afternoons to be sent out—but it is an urgent matter, said Mrs. Robert, and held out the envelope. There was no name on it, no address, and Mrs. Robert made her repeat over and over where it is to be taken, and into whose hands it is to be put—no one else's, only the master's, she is to be sure of that. She is also to linger if she can, to look tired and hungry and, if she is offered a cup of tea, to take it.

   "What for, ma'am?" she asked.

   "Because you are young and pretty," said Mrs. Robert, "and that can be useful."

   She'd felt her face grow hot all of a sudden, and looked down. "I don't see how, ma'am." Mrs. Robert had lifted her chin with one hand—not brusquely, but not gently either. "You are my eyes and my ears," she said. "Now I need you to make yourself useful in Mr. Popham's household. Do you understand? He is sure to have a valet, or a footman. If he should ask when your half day will be, you can tell him tomorrow, or whichever day might be convenient for him." She went to the desk and gathered up a small pile of coins—Jane's wages for the month. "Well?" she'd said.

   How could she protest? Yet when Mrs. Robert counted the coins into her palm and gave her a smile, she felt that she barely belonged to herself.

   Of course, Sarah was waiting on the stairs again. "Got your wages, did you?" There was no point denying it with the money in her hand. Sarah's hand extended towards hers. "Thank you kindly," she said. She repeated it when Jane's hand didn't open. What choice was there but to give her the money? So she did, and then watched Sarah's skirts sway as she took the stairs up to their room to hide it.

   Now she bows her head against the wind and tucks her scarf more securely around her neck. She read through the classifieds and imagined herself in a different household, as though she could just walk through a doorway and into a different life. Yet managing it has been more than she can think how to do: she has no writing paper, she has nowhere to sit and write her letter without someone— Sarah or Elsie or Mrs. Johnson—coming upon her. Perhaps Teddy could help. Does his master need a maid? Or one of his neighbors? Plus there is still the matter of her character. How can she write one for herself when any decent mistress in London would want to come and talk to Mrs. Robert?

   Teddy. What would he do if he discovered what Mrs. Robert has asked her to do? Would it excuse it, that Mrs. Robert insisted she let another man—any man of this Mr. Popham's household—take her out? And, she wonders, would that half day be her only time off ? Her eyes sting at the thought of it. Teddy wants to take her to Hyde Park, to the palace, to see the Tower of London where those queens had their heads chopped off back in the days when royalty could command that sort of thing.

   Turning into a wider street, she finds more people to dodge, and when she has to cross the road, a pile of horse dirt that she comes close to stepping in. Everywhere lie the filthy remains of snow turned grey with soot. Nothing in this city can stay clean. Sooner or later—indeed, sooner rather than later—everything gets tainted, just from being here.

   She has the route memorized: down to the end of the street and left, past the shops, across the street and right, past the church, past two more streets, to Howard Row, to number sixteen, where she is to ask for the master and to accept whatever refreshment is offered, down in the warmth of the kitchen.

   Here is the church now. A shut-up-looking place, with its wooden doors facing onto the street. It doesn't do to be thinking about God at a time like this, she tells herself. She got set on the wrong path with that forged letter, and now look what has come of her, holding that young widow in her arms, her breath warm on her neck, urging her, "Tell me, ma'am. Tell me how it is you're so on your own." Then— barely an hour later—laying out everything she heard to Mrs. Robert: the widow is not really a lady, or at least only the very lowest kind. The orphan of missionaries in some small town in India, left on her own when they died of cholera, no one to care for her, so she became the paid companion of a spiteful old woman. She fetched and carried, she wrote the woman's letters, she managed the servants, she bathed the woman's wretched dog, she ate her meals between the blank walls of her room whenever there were guests. And every day she felt hope for her own life draining away.

   She passes a street—Newham. A gentleman swears at her as she hurries in front of him. She thinks of how the gong for breakfast had sounded, and how the widow had turned to her. Her eyes looked small and afraid, and her hair clung to her face, limp as seaweed. "You won't tell, will you?" she said. "Who knows what they'd think of me." So she'd said no, she wouldn't tell, and the sound of her voice comes back to her now, its slight hoarseness, its firmness, all meant to convince the widow. She kept her eyes on the widow's and again told her no, and this time she'd come close to meaning it. No wonder the widow had believed her. Yet what was that promise in the face of Mrs. Robert's insistence that surely—surely after all those mornings and evenings helping the widow—she had found out something? It wasn't the words that made her stare down at her hands, it was the tone, so light, as though none of this was of much importance. Of no more importance than her own fate. If she was dismissed, she thought, it would be done like this—Mrs. Robert standing on the carpet by the fire, smiling, tilting her head just so, as though this were all a joke. So while the silence t
ick-tick-ticked
between them she'd stared stupidly at her hands. "Well?" Mrs. Robert had said. "Don't you have anything to say?"

   Was it wrong, what she'd done? She felt it was. Like a splinter under the skin, it bothered her. Though wasn't her first duty to Mrs. Robert and the household?

   She has been walking so fast that now she has to make herself stop, look about her, notice that she has gone too far and turn around, knocking into someone—a large woman in bombazine. These days it seems everyone is in mourning.

   The house, when she reaches it, is finer than any other she's yet seen in London, not that she's seen much. The steps climb from the street in a long, whitened rise, as though this is not a home but a temple. She works her way along the railings, down the steps, and across the area to the kitchen door, where she knocks.

   A slightly fetid smell hangs on the air here, despite the cold. In a moment the door opens and a bedraggled maid in a wet apron says, "What d'ya want? No situations here."

   She has to persuade her that she has a letter for the master, and when the maid's damp hand reaches for it she explains, it is for the
master,
and her mistress has told her it can only be given to him.

   "Then you'll have to wait," she snaps.

   At first she thinks she'll have to wait outside in the shadowy cold of the area, but the maid moves to the side and jerks her head to tell her to come in. The kitchen is bigger than the Bentleys', and brighter, too, though mostly because it has been painted more recently. At the table stands a small woman with a pale egg of a face and a cap on top of curly black hair. She looks up from the pile of onions she is slicing, knife poised, eyebrows raised. "What's this?" she says.

   The maid bumps the door closed with her hip. "Maid with a message for the master. Has to put it in
his
hands, doesn't she?"

   "Oh." The cook puts down the knife and wipes her hands on her apron. "The master trusts us," she says to Jane. "Isn't that good enough for you?"

   "It's my mistress," she says. "I'm just doing it how she told me."

   The cook leans onto the table. Her hands, Jane notices, are small, but her fingers are as thick and wrinkled as carrots. As for her pale eyes, they have a curious vacancy, like a cat's. Nevertheless, they watch Jane as she stands there, in her old hat and scarf, her coat that is not warm enough, her bare hands that have turned red from the cold. "Very well," she says. "Sit down, then. Fanny will fetch you a cup of tea when she has a minute."

   So she sits and waits. She doesn't even unbutton her coat. Instead she perches on the edge of her chair, looking as though at any moment she expects to be turned out of this house to brave the winter day outside. The minutes pass. The cook drops the onions into a large pot and sets to work on a large cut of beef, salting and peppering it, dotting its sleek sides with butter. From the scullery two maids appear in rolled-up sleeves and grimy aprons. Fanny pours tea for them all from a large, stained teapot. She doles out milk, and sugar, and doesn't look at Jane when she pushes a cup towards her.