Birdcage Walk (16 page)

When Charlotte finally reached Avebury Street, she peered in through the window before going in. She wanted to make sure Ted was safely at the pub and unable to interrogate her about her supposed walk with George. Annie was sitting down for once, taking advantage of Ted’s empty armchair while he was out. She was alone with a pile of darning, little Edward must have been put to bed already. A picture of slumped exhaustion, her hair was damp and greasy from bending over steaming pans and a few limp strands clung to her cheeks. In repose, her face looked worn and much older than her 26 years, and seeing it made Charlotte feel teary, as sorry for her sister as herself. With her hand on the doorknob, she set her face, hiding her misery with a mask blank of expression so it wouldn’t betray the fact that she hadn’t been with George at all, or that if she had they’d clearly had some sort of blazing row.

“Ah, here she is,” said Annie, in a half-hearted attempt at outrage. “The Arctic explorer returns. You look froze to the bone, Lottie, just as I said you would. I can’t for the life of me think why you’d want to be outside on a night like this.”

Charlotte crouched in front of the range, glad Annie was distracted by her sewing. Some quiet minutes passed, but eventually Annie spoke again, never one for keeping quiet long.

“Do you know who you missed by five minutes when you went rushing out earlier?”

Charlotte’s stomach lurched with hope for a second, until she remembered that George had already been in Highbury when she left the house. She couldn’t be bothered to answer Annie and continued studying the drips of fat that had solidified on the black iron of the range.

“I might as well talk to myself here. It was that little sister of George’s, Cissy. She had something for you, it’s over there on the table.”

Charlotte glanced up and saw a white envelope propped up against the salt cellar. Even from her position on the floor she could recognise George’s handwriting. It wasn’t so different from Joe’s, the kind of writing that looked as though it didn’t presume to take up too much paper.

Deliberately carefully, she got to her feet and crossed to the table. Holding the letter to her chest she turned and walked up the stairs.

“Don’t go hiding up there to read it, Lottie,” called Annie after her. “If you’re getting love letters from George, I want to hear them. Lord knows I don’t get any of my own to read. Lottie! Don’t you wake Eddie up now, or I’ll swing for you.”

The child was on his back, arms flung back over his head and his mouth open, his cold having blocked up his nose. He’d kicked off his blanket and Charlotte replaced it carefully, tucking the extra underneath the hot little body and smoothing down his fluffy shock of hair. As she did it, making her movements as slow as possible, her heart betrayed her real feelings, thudding so hard she wondered how it didn’t just give out.

Eventually she allowed herself to sit down on the edge of her bed and lit the stubby candle down by its side. Her mind worked furiously as she at first picked at and then ripped open the envelope. If Cissy had delivered the letter tonight, then George must have asked her to deliver it while he was out at the Highbury house. He might have delivered it himself except he obviously didn’t want to see her and that could only mean that it was bad news. Her stomach began to hurt once more.

It was a curious note, with a postscript longer than the body of the letter itself. Even the way he’d addressed her made her nauseous with shock, despite all her misgivings during the last few weeks.

Miss Cheeseman,

Just a line. Recently I made the acquaintance of a young lady I admire much better than you. Therefore you had better do the same and think no more of me, if you haven’t done so already. I hope you will take this as goodbye for good.

G. Woolfe

PS: I hope I shall never hear of you or see you again, and I am thankful I got rid of you so easily. I have got the date I went with you, so if you find yourself in trouble, or I mean in a certain condition, it will do no good to put the blame on me. I pity the man who ever gets tied to you, but I am glad that I am free at last and now have a chance of being my old self again.

Charlotte could see that the postscript was written far more hastily than the rest of the letter, its script sloping down the page at a precarious angle and the ink pooling where the nib had stayed too long on the paper. In the dark hours that followed, Charlotte came to think of these observations as small crumbs of comfort. She thought he must have been either drunk or furious to write such a bitter afterthought. She read it again, this time without the postscript and shuddered at its calm rejection of her. Only his intimation that she might have found someone else already made her hopeful that his motive was injured pride and needless jealousy, rather than his simply having grown sick and tired of her.

She sat for an hour or more on the edge of the bed, scanning the lines until the candle sputtered out and left her in the darkness, the only sound the child’s stertorous breathing, the street outside unusually quiet. She had half crumpled the letter in anger but now found herself smoothing it out on her lap, being careful not to let the drips of salt-water obscure the ink. The journey to Highbury and now the letter seemed to crystallize and concentrate her thoughts. Nothing would change for her; nothing would get better. There would be no glittering Christmas tree; no getting warm, properly warm to the bones. There wouldn’t even be any George now that he had been lured away. By rights, she couldn’t blame him for taking that glimpse of a different life because who wouldn’t? But that night, sitting in the dark, she found that she did blame him, and that she would have to spoil it for him as it had always been spoilt for her. She would write her own letter tomorrow.

When Annie came up a short while later, unable to stay downstairs wondering what the flimsy envelope had contained for a moment longer, she found Charlotte slumped sideways on her bed asleep, her feet still in their boots and touching the floor. The letter had fluttered to the floor and Annie was glad she couldn’t read, as all her moral strength couldn’t have stopped her reading George’s words.

* * *

8th March 1902

Dearest Lottie,

Even here I can feel the weather softening slightly at last. Usually the thought of spring returning makes me feel brighter, but this time I’ve found it more melancholy than anything else. Lottie, I know now that I was a fool not to see what I had in you, when I did, before all this. Don’t think I don’t dwell on that here, long into the night when everyone else has either sunk unconscious into sleep or taken up wailing until the dawn breaks through. There is such a lot of time to think in this place.

There is no glass in the window high above my bed and, what with me having nothing but an old rag of blanket to keep me warm at night, it’s been a hard February. I told you about the damp bricks. It’s not just them, the dankness seems to soak into everything, so that the skin on my hands looks white and bloated and my clothes—and that mean blanket too—never seem to completely dry out. Sam says the summers are worse; the smell even more putrid from all the sickness that goes around like wildfire in the heat, but I hope to be out of here, one way or another, by that time. I think I’d go mad if I wasn’t.

I was telling you about the window having no glass in it. There are only bars, you see, Lottie, two of them down but three across so that the gaps are not square. They make twelve portrait pictures of the outside, not that anybody would bother painting the view. All you can see from up here is a glimpse of the inner courtyard where it never gets properly light, and the rows of windows like mine opposite.

This side faces east so I’m woken early, at the cold crack of dawn. We get the worst of the wind too. It blows straight in from the steppes of Siberia, or so I’m told, whistling a clear path over the lowlands of Holland and the flat fields of East Anglia. On the colder mornings, it doesn’t feel like that long journey west has warmed or softened it at all. My hands and feet have been almost purple with the cold on those mornings. I hope March has brought an end to them now.

I have gone on about my own woes enough now, Lottie. I wish you knew what a help it had been for me to write you these notes. Do you remember that note I wrote to you just before Christmas? It was a cruel thing, though you were never meant to read it. It was written in temper and I never did apologise for it properly. Poor old Cissy meant well, taking it round to you to save me the trouble, but sometimes I can’t help wondering how different things might have turned out if she hadn’t.

With love from your,

George

Charlotte arrived at the large white house early, the church clock indicating ten minutes to the hour she had stated in her letter, written two nights earlier. The air seemed colder and fresher in these parts, as though even the atmosphere was rarified, and brought in especially from the country so its inhabitants weren’t forced to breathe the close air that she was accustomed to.

She pulled her old black shawl closer around her shoulders and rehearsed what she would say to the gentleman, and in what manner. She felt more conscious of her own body here, and even though she was only a mile, perhaps less, from her familiar haunts, her hands seemed more rough and mottled than they did in the dirt-diffused light of Hoxton. Grubbier too; in the clear light she noticed the sickle of dirt curving under each nail. As she picked at them, wiping the grime on her skirts, a nurse approached with a large, well-sprung perambulator, her collar a stark white above a wool cloak. She stared at Charlotte, whose embarrassment at the attention suddenly revived her temper.

“Had a good enough look, have you?” she spat, startling the nurse, whose cheeks coloured as she lowered her eyes. Though she hurried on, Charlotte couldn’t stop herself calling after.

“I’ve got an appointment with the gentleman in the house over there, thanks very much, and I’ve as much right as you to be here. Bloody cheek, you’ve got, staring like that, as if I were muck under your feet.”

The nurse had by now rounded the corner ahead without risking a backwards glance but Charlotte could hear the rising wail of the perambulator’s small occupant, roused by her cries from his slumber. She knew her anger was meant for George, and not some stuck-up nurse, but she didn’t care.

She had written her own letter in much the same rushed, unthinking way as she hoped George had written his. She had woken early the next morning after her visit to Highbury, finding her clothes on but her boots off, removed by Annie and placed tidily under the bed. She sat bolt upright and searched the bedclothes for the creased note George had sent Cissy round with, eventually finding it under her pillow. If she hadn’t felt so humiliated she might have smiled at the thought of Annie finding the note but not being able to decipher its letters.

She begged a few pence off her sister and went straight to the post office to buy some paper and a stamp. It was only as she stepped into the street, the previous night’s fog miraculously lifted, that she remembered it was the day before Christmas Eve. The streets were busy, thronged with people looking sickeningly happy and festive. She approached a band of carol singers surrounded by a crowd of people who’d stopped to listen. The smell of wood-smoke, orange peel and roasting chestnuts mingled in the air and everywhere she looked there seemed to be sweethearts clasped arm in arm, noticing no one but each other despite the crush.

She pushed her way through, not minding whom she knocked with her sharp elbows, mindful that the post office would close before long. She’d dug out some writing paper back at Annie’s, stuffed in her carpet bag with the rest of the things she’d brought from her mother’s, but it was yellowed and mottled with damp and she wanted the letter’s intended reader to treat it with due gravity.

She didn’t know the family name in order to address it properly, only the house and street name, but she supposed it would get there alright. She calculated that by the time she composed, wrote and posted it, the letter would still get there for Christmas Eve. That’s when she also intended to pay her visit, so she had to hope that the post was opened first thing in the morning. She would just have to take the risk of going there unannounced and being turned away. There was nothing else for it and she couldn’t wait until after Christmas.

It didn’t occur to her to wonder if there was a man of the house to read it. She hoped that the arrival of a handwritten note would be unlikely to stay unread for long, but added the word ‘Confidential’ to the top left hand corner just in case, checking the spelling of the unfamiliar word against a solicitors’ advertisement in the Hackney Gazette. It was but a brief note.

Dear Sir,

I am writing to you about Mr. George Woolfe, who I believe has become a regular visitor to your house. I wish to speak to you in person at your earliest convenience as the things I must say to you cannot be put down easily in a letter. I will call at your house at noon tomorrow (Christmas Eve) and hope that you will speak to me. It is in your family’s interest that you do so. I am sorry that this letter will reach you at this festive time of year but I believe the matter will not wait.

Yours sincerely,

Miss C. Cheeseman

.

* * *

Standing outside the house now, Charlotte wondered if the letter had even been read. Perhaps there was no man of the house to open it. She glanced up at the clock and saw that it was now just a few minutes until midday. Anger abruptly departed, nerves clenching in her stomach, she straightened her hat, shawl and hem, and adopting a long-practiced look of surly pride, went across the street and up the steps to the heavy, black-painted door, where she lifted the knocker and bravely banged it against the wood three times.

The maid who answered the door looked Charlotte up and down in a manner that far exceeded the impertinence of the nurse on the street.

“If you’re bringing something for cook you’re to come round the side,” the maid said stonily, and went to shut the door. Charlotte put her hand against the heavy wood and pushed back; in her determination to see her plan through she was stronger than Milly.

“I’m not here to see no cook,” she said. “I’ve arranged to call on the gentleman who lives here at noon today. Tell him Charlotte Cheeseman’s come and he’ll know what it’s about.”

Milly looked indignant. “Well, I don’t know anything about it, I’m sure. Wait there.” And with that, the maid shut the door firmly. Left alone on the well-scrubbed doorstep, Charlotte felt herself shaking from more than the cold, quite amazed at her own nerve. Soon enough the maid was back and, looking personally put out, she held the door barely wide enough for Charlotte to pass, as if to register her disapproval of the admittance.

“Follow me,” she said, “he’s in his study.”

Charlotte thought of saying to the sour-faced maid that she might have been let in out of the cold as she wasn’t going to steal the silver but in the event, as they crossed the polished hall tiles, she was too busy looking about her. George had walked over these clean-scrubbed tiles and felt the smooth brass doorknobs turn in his hand. A polished banister spooled gracefully upwards, its staircase carpeted in a runner of deep red which was brightened by a patch of coloured light falling from a stained glass window set high above. Faintly, she could hear scales being played fluidly on a piano, the notes rising and falling like water.

The study lay at the rear of the house. In the grate, a freshly laid fire spat and roared up the chimney. It seemed to Charlotte afterwards that the room had been filled with a dozen glowing lamps, but perhaps there were fewer. The brightest was atop the enormous bulk of the captain’s desk, its light puddling on a blotter edged in sage coloured leather. As he rose to greet her from behind the lamp, his face remained in shadow. The maid retreated and shut the door quietly.

“Miss Cheeseman,” he murmured. “My name is Captain Drew. I received your letter at breakfast and, as you can doubtless imagine, I was perplexed by its contents. I presume it was your intention to pique my interest—and concern—so now I must ask you to hold me in suspense no longer. Please sit.”

He gestured to the hard chair placed opposite the desk and settled back in his own leather-studded seat, without moving to the bell to summon the hot tea Charlotte had been hoping might warm her chilled bones.

“Now, you spoke in your letter of important information regarding George Woolfe. Do you know him personally?”

“You might say that, sir,” replied Charlotte, affecting a bitter sigh and a pensive glance into the flames.

“I am a busy man, miss, and have no time for theatrics learned from the stage of the Britannia,” said the captain. “My wife tells me that George Woolfe is a helpful lad, with a decent brain and a special aptitude for drawing. I know nothing of you, so please get on with what you have to say, and quickly.”

Charlotte coloured at this and her face, lit strangely by the fire, seemed to sharpen. She looked at him directly, her catlike eyes darkening.

“I am not here to waste your time, sir. I believed that it was my duty to come here and warn you about George Woolfe. I come on account of your young daughter, sir, who I believe has grown close to George.”

The captain shot her an anxious look.

“What are you to him anyway? He has never mentioned your name to my wife and daughter. They were baffled by your note, apparently from a stranger.”

Ignoring the slight, she continued determinedly.

“That doesn’t surprise me, sir. I believe he has preferred to keep his times here with you in your lovely house separate to his life at home. I live just a road away from him in Hoxton, where I moved in the summer to live with my sister and her husband after my mother died. I met George on the street one day and we got talking—he’d lost his mother as well, see, and so we had that in common. Me and George started stepping out, just to the pub usually, and it wasn’t much but we talked of marriage and I believed that we would be wed in time. I haven’t had much of my own in my life but I felt that George was mine, and that his promises to me about the future were true. Otherwise I would never have . . . ” she came to a halt and dropped her eyes.

“Never have what?” asked Captain Drew tentatively.

“Well, it’s hard for me to speak of it, especially to a gentleman, sir. What I mean to say is that George would come to me sometimes, quite regular in fact. Do you understand my meaning, sir? I thought we were intended, you see, though I knew it was still a sin.”

Captain Drew started with realisation and, to cover his embarrassment, began to search his pockets for tobacco. Charlotte resumed, in flatter tones.

“So when he started spending his every spare minute elsewhere, I grew suspicious, thinking he’d met someone new. At first he wouldn’t say nothing about where he went and then, when I accused him of seeing another girl, he said he was visiting the library of this Highbury gentleman he’d met. I didn’t believe a word of it, of course, and then one day last week I got a note from him.”

She passed over the note and piously clasped her hands in her lap as she watched him scan the lines. When he was done, he set the much-folded scrap down and exhaled audibly.

“He had never mentioned your daughter when he told me about this library, sir, so, one night, I asked him the address of this well-to-do Highbury family, thinking, if I’m honest, that he was really going to court some new piece in Hackney.”

Captain Drew seemed to be concentrating hard on tamping the tobacco down in his pipe, his eyes lowered. But when she paused, wondering if he was still listening, he quickly looked up and motioned for her to continue.

“In the end, I badgered him about it for so long that he lost his temper and told me this address because of it. I told him after that I had forgotten it but really I had written it down and, one night, knowing he would be here, I came to see for myself. I watched through the window—I’m sorry that I spied, sir, but I had to know the truth of it for my own peace of mind, see—and I saw him sitting on the sofa with a lovely young lady. And when I saw how he doted on her, like he once had with me, and how she looked up at him, with her eyes all shiny and trusting, I wanted to knock on the door then. But I was afraid to, and so angry that George had made a fool of me that I ran home, slipping on the ice and half-crying all the way.”

The captain leant forward. “So what made you write your note and come today with such urgency?”

“It pains me to say this aloud, sir, and to a stranger, but when George grew cold towards me, I didn’t want to let him go easily. I knew how he had enjoyed the times he had come to me.” The captain moved his hands to his desk, spread them and began to study them closely.

“What I mean is that he continued to come to me, even while he was growing unfriendly in his manner to me, and while he was visiting you and your young girl. I didn’t mean for it to happen and I’m awful ashamed, but I loved him and couldn’t seem to help it. And now, well, I’m with child, sir.” Her listener blanched at this, he had truly not seen the news coming.

In a soft, anguished tone, he said, “and the child is definitely his?”

“I may be a poor thing, with none of your daughter’s graces or advantages, but I am no street girl,” said Charlotte proudly. “George is the only man I’ve been with and that was in good faith that he would make me his wife.” She stood to leave, gathering her shawl about her shoulders with jerky movements, her voice tremulous. She couldn’t stand to be in the rich room a moment longer, knowing now that her best hat looked moth-eaten and that her blouse and neck were grubby.

“That’s all I come to say so I’ll be off now. I thought it was only right to warn you, when you have a defenceless, innocent girl in the house.” She walked over to the door, twice her width.

“But wait!” he cried, awkwardly getting to his feet. “What shall you do? Have you told him?”

Charlotte paused, her eyes on the rich colours of the rug under her feet.

“I have told him and he is not interested, says he won’t be tied to me when he is getting on so well lately. That’s all I wished to say. I’ll leave you now. Goodbye, sir.” She walked through the door, her high, laced boots clipping on the tiles as she crossed the hall, closed the front door quietly behind her and descended the steps into the chill afternoon.

Suddenly alone in the quiet room, Captain Drew knew he ought to follow her, perhaps give her some money. Instead he felt suddenly overcome by fatigue and sank back into his chair, where he remained deep in thought until Clemmie finished her piano practice and came to tell him it was time to prepare for their annual party. The first guests were due in a few hours, as was George Woolfe.