Birdcage Walk (18 page)

“My child? But I don’t understand. She can’t be. She did not tell me. Why has she not told me? I have not seen her for a week or more.”

“You say you did not know?” The captain put down his pipe hard enough for the tobacco to be dislodge and scatter on the thick creamy blotter there. George stared at it and let his eyes unfocus, the dark golden red fronds the same colour in the firelight as Charlotte’s hair.

“I fail to see any reason why this woman, a stranger to me and my family, would go to the trouble of sending me a note and insisting on seeing me in person if she did not have good reason. She made it clear that you did not want to know after she told you of her condition. You told her you were not interested in her plight because you had another in mind. My daughter.”

“Sir, you must believe me, I would never . . . ” George held out his hands.

“I cannot believe you,” said the captain, shaking his head. “I have thought about it without ceasing this afternoon and I have reached my final, unshakeable decision. I cannot precisely know which of you is telling the truth. It is likely that the real truth of it is not absolute, but a bending and warping of the real facts. In light of that, I would feel ill at ease to have you in close proximity to my daughter. She is most taken with you, as Clemmie is intrigued by anyone outside of her own secure orbit—I think perhaps she has taken after her godfather in that way. She is but a girl, a girl who, though she believes otherwise, knows nothing of the world. She is entirely innocent in her affection for you so far but I cannot risk her becoming more dangerously attached. This has all gone quite far enough.

“If only I had been here, as most men are at home and not absent for months at a time, I believe I would have seen the signs of this . . . this rather unsavoury connection and taken steps to sever it before now. It is not entirely for someone such as yourself to know how you have done wrong. Really, I must take some of the blame.”

Captain Drew was no longer talking to George, but into the fire, his cheeks pitted and ruddy from faraway sunshine. George went to speak but realised it was futile, that Captain Drew would never change his opinion, that his card had been marked as soon as Charlotte’s note had landed on the breakfast table. He could see the scene as clearly as though he’d been there himself, the captain’s calloused hand reaching for the small white envelope, Milly bustling about with dishes and salvers and Miss Clemmie chattering on, as his eyes absorbed but didn’t recognise Charlotte’s round, childish handwriting.

The two men sat in silence for a long moment. George looked beyond the captain out of the window and tried to stop his mind turning furiously over all he’d just learnt. It was almost too much to comprehend. That Charlotte had been here, had sat in this same room, and just a few hours before, left George reeling. He simply couldn’t piece it all together. She was obviously seeking revenge after receiving the drunken note he’d never intended her to see, but that didn’t explain how she knew so much. How had she known where to come and how had she known Captain Drew would be here to speak to her? It was quite beyond him to understand it.

The sky was almost dark outside, and what lingered of the light was stark and cold, in contrast to the deep glow inside the study. He felt a clutching kind of horror at the idea of being sent back out into the inhospitable day, now fast becoming night, but knowing it was imminent he found he didn’t want to prolong the painful anticipation any longer.

“Sir, Captain, I will go now,” he said quietly. “I do not know what it is to be a father to a young girl but I do know what it is to be a brother to one. My own sister, Cissy, is not well today and I must be getting back to her. She looks after me and my dad as best she can since our mother died but it’s hard for her, being only fifteen. People would say that she is a very different kind of girl to Miss Clemmie, and of course Cissy has none of your daughter’s accomplishments and . . . graceful ways about her. But in some ways they are not so different, sir. Cissy has had quite a hard life, you would say, but none of that roughness has shown itself in her and she is as gentle a girl as I’ve ever seen.”

The Captain remained quiet as George spoke, watching the younger man’s clenched hands as he spoke on.

“Sir, what I mean to say is that I would do anything to keep Cissy safe because I am her brother. And, though I had no right to, I had come to see Miss Clemmie as someone who I would also protect from anything that might harm her. I think that if Cissy had been born into a better kind of life then she might have turned out something like Miss Clemmie and so when I was here, helping Mrs. Drew, I would sometimes imagine that it was the case and that I . . . “

George stopped talking and stood. He didn’t wish to say any more, he wasn’t sure why he had said so much. It was the heat from the fire and the soft lamplight, it was making him feel like he was dreaming. He wasn’t though, and he must leave now, for the last time.

“Mr. Woolfe, I understand what you are saying and I wish to believe you, I do. But you understand that even if you are telling the truth, this has become an impossible situation for me. I will be leaving with my ship in a fortnight, unwillingly leaving behind my small family once more. The sea affords a man much time to think, too much time, I sometimes believe. Leaving this situation unresolved would truly be an albatross hung about this sailor’s neck.” He smiled sadly at his own cliché.

The captain stood and, though he still looked drawn with indecision, relief that the exchange was almost over had begun to flood his face. He swung open the study door and gestured for George to go through it. He had hoped that the hubbub of the gathering would have sufficiently distracted Clemmie, but he had underestimated her. She had been waiting in the hall, ostensibly welcoming guests and helping Milly divest them of their coats and hats, but now she rushed towards the pair emerging from the study.

“What is happening, father? Why have you and George been locked in there for so long? Please tell me.”

Her cheeks were pale and the ribbon that fastened her hair in its usual plait had undone and lay limply over her shoulder.

“I’m afraid I will have to go now, Miss Clemmie.”

He looked back at the captain who, almost imperceptibly, nodded at him. Clemmie looked from her father’s face and back to George’s, scanning them desperately.

“I don’t understand this at all. George, why must you go so soon?”

“My sister has been taken bad today, miss, and I should not really have come at all. Goodbye now, and have a merry Christmas. Please tell Mrs. Drew the same, and also thank you for being kind to me.”

“George, you sound like you’re never coming back!”

In her frustration she plucked at George’s lapel, tears already forming in her eyes. The captain came forward immediately and pried her off, realising as he did that some of the guests nearest the open drawing room door had turned to watch the unfolding scene.

“Clemmie, go to your mother. Mr. Woolfe is leaving. I will explain this to you later. Now, go.”

He steered her towards the drawing room with a firm hand, but she shook him off and ran two steps at a time up the stairs, openly sobbing now. She might have been a girl of twelve, George thought to himself, though he was moved by her distress. He glanced into the drawing room, its centrepiece the tree he had helped decorate only a few days before, though it seemed to him like another lifetime. Mrs. Drew was nowhere to be seen, though he thought he could see the back of Mr. Booth’s head, bobbing with animation as he told a story to an enrapt trio of young men about George’s own age.

A cold gust of wind brought him back to the hall. Milly had opened the door and now stood holding it open, her eyes, most unusually, on her feet in their tiny boots, as shiny as the tiles beneath them. He nearly turned and offered his hand to the Captain to shake but then thought immediately better of it and put his hat on instead. As he stepped across the threshold, Milly suddenly looked up and nodded at him.

“Bye, George,” she said. “Take care now.”

His surprise at her was the saving of him. He went down the steps and to the cold iron gate in such a state of disbelief that he forgot to feel too much of a wrench. It was only there that he thought to turn back, just as the door was softly closed. Some instinct made him look up and in a high window he could see the white oval of Miss Clemmie’s face. He raised his hand to her and tried to smile but she remained motionless. He could only just make her out, she looked more like a ghost in the almost-dark, the room behind her as gloomy as outside. Closing the gate behind him, he took a deep, shaky breath and began to walk away. As he reached the bend in the road that would finally obscure the house, he looked back again. He couldn’t know for sure, not in that light, but he was almost sure that she had gone.

George walked blindly back towards the drearily familiar streets of Hoxton. The throng of people he had stopped to stare at earlier were now invisible to him in his numb state. They seemed to whirl around him in a muddy blur; the clamour of Christmas Eve muffled and muted as though he were held under water.

He stopped at the butcher’s and paid over the odds for a fat-studded shoulder of mutton and half a dozen sausages. It would have to do for tomorrow, if he left it any later there would be nothing to be had anywhere and he couldn’t have that weighing on his conscience too. Clutching the package, the ooze of the meat already making it transparent and damp, George hurried on towards Avebury Street. He didn’t expect Charlotte to be at home with Annie, and he would not have known what to say to her if she had been. They always needed extra shifts worked at Freeman’s at this time of year and he knew how much rent Charlotte owed her sister. She would be at work and so would Ted and he would be able to catch Annie alone. He rapped smartly on the door when he reached it and jumped when it opened instantly, Annie in her coat, the child in her arms bundled up against the cold.

“George! You’ve just caught me. I’m off out to get some bits before tomorrow. I forgot to get the gravy browning, can you believe it? Ted would’ve had my guts if I’d forgotten his gravy.”

She stopped talking as she took in George’s strange expression.

“You alright, George? You look peaky. You haven’t caught a chill, have you? I said to Cissy when she came round with your note that she didn’t look right. How is she?”

“Mrs. Matthews, I wondered if you could give Charlotte a message for me.”

“Course I will, love. She’ll be home in an hour or so. She got a couple of shifts at Freeman’s last minute. I told her she can buy her old sister a . . . Sorry, George, I’m going on. What were you saying?”

“Can you tell her that I’m sorry about the note, and that I didn’t mean it. If she wants to see me, I’ll be waiting on the canal bridge at a quarter to seven. I’ll make it all up to her, tell her.”

Annie glowed with pleasure and relief under her slightly squashed hat.

“I’ll tell her the minute she comes through the door, lovey, don’t you worry. She’ll be so glad to hear it.”

George thanked her curtly and turned on his heel. Annie watched him go, joggling the baby absentmindedly, before her head filled once again with all the small tasks she had yet to accomplish. She set off in the other direction, George’s behaviour, at odds with his message, already forgotten.

As George walked away down Avebury Street towards home he felt gripped by a sudden panic. Annie mentioning Cissy had brought him out of himself and it came to him in a cold flood of dread that Cissy would be dead when he got back; that Cissy was at this moment lying alone and dead in their shabby rooms, like marble to the touch. He saw it so clearly that he broke into a run and almost tripped over a loose cobble, his package of meat landing with a wet thud on the dirty street. He scrabbled to pick it up and saw that one of the sausages had burst out and was ruined. He broke it off and threw it as hard as he could into the gutter. Two girls up ahead, their arms linked and their hats touching, laughed at him behind their hands. Holding his messy package close, George sped past them, the urge to bang their silly heads together almost overwhelming him.

He took the stairs up to the rooms in a great stumbling rush and fell upon the door, his hand, damp from the meat, slipping on the handle. He remembered that he had done this once before, and seen his mother with that man. Eventually he got purchase enough on the handle to make it turn and flung the door back. It was quite black inside, the fire having long died out. The air was palpably cold; danker even than outside. He looked about him wildly, his unaccustomed eyes blinking and blind in the deep gloom.

“Cissy?” His voice came out high and strained. “Cissy, you there?”

He fumbled towards the range and found the matches and a stub of old tallow.

“George?” Her voice was almost inaudible, thick with cold and sleep.

He let out his breath slowly, and remained kneeling until the short wick of the candle finally hissed and lit. He looked over at his sister, who smiled weakly from the chair he had left her in.

“You get the meat, George? I’ll be alright to do the dinner by tomorrow.”

She held out her hand and he rose to take it, crouching down next to the small figure in their father’s high-backed chair.

“There weren’t much left but I got us some mutton to boil up, and a few sausages.” He paused and bowed his head.

“Cissy, I thought . . . I don’t know why but when I was coming back I had this vision of you here. I thought for a minute that you might be . . . ”

“Be what? Oh George, I’m alright. I’m not very big but I’m stronger than I look. It’s just a bad cold.”

She took off his hat and began stroking his head gently. He tried to breathe in deeply but it turned into a long, shuddering sob. After a time he was quiet again, and neither he nor Cissy spoke until the room felt so cold that he forced himself to rise. Wiping his face on his sleeve, he went to stoke the fire.

* * *

15th March 1902

Dearest Lottie,

Things go on here as before. I feel like I’ve been here years instead of weeks. Time is strange here. It expands and then contracts like India rubber. When I get a visit, it clatters by like a train going at full tilt but then when it comes to the nights it’s as though it has stopped altogether. But I’ve told you about the nights here before. I wish you could visit me here.

Newgate is a miserable gothic pile, blackened as much by the foul air inside as out. It’s got a gruesome history and some days, when it never seems to get properly light, you can almost smell and taste what’s gone before, like it’s seeping out of the walls.

There are ghosts here, you know. How can there not be in a place that’s held so much misery for so many years, in a place where more than a thousand people have gone to the hangman? There’s been a prison sitting on this blighted portion of earth since the 12th century. Lottie, I remember you always wished you could see a ghost. You thought it would be a thrill to feel an icy breath on your neck in the dark, didn’t you? But it’s not like that. Not like a story you’d tell round a fire. Evil people have been here, inside these walls, women too. Do you remember the story of Catherine Wilson? She was before our time but I bet you’d have known the name. She was the nurse they reckoned poisoned seven people, though she was only done for one. Twenty thousand turned out to see her hanged outside on Newgate Street. Sam knows a bloke who says he’s seen her at night, walking straight through the door of his cell, her cap bright in the moonlight. On the nights when I think of things like that, I’m glad of Sam and his snoring on the other side of the wall.

I suppose Newgate looks pretty respectable from the outside. People going about their business must look up at its great thick walls and believe that everything is in order, with the bad locked away out of sight and off the streets. Inside it’s a different story. A decent person wouldn’t keep animals in here.

When we go out in the exercise yard, we can’t feel a scrap of sunlight on us, even on the days when the sky above us is a clear blue. The stones on the floor down there are slippery and bright green with moss, and walking around there feels like you’re pacing about at the bottom of a deep well, especially when the guard shouts out at someone and his voice echoes and booms.

They built this place after the old one burnt to the ground during the Great Fire of 1666, the prisoners burnt to cinders inside because no one would let them out as the flames crept nearer. I don’t know what that one looked like but when they built the new one they made sure that the yard was surrounded on all four sides by walls so high that the sun only shines there for a few minutes a day. Not that we’re ever allowed out there then. We’re always in the shade, in the shadows. The closest we get to the light is to stick our arms through the bars of our cells on a fine day and feel the warmth on our skin there, that small part of ourselves free and outside of Newgate for a few minutes.

I never thought I’d end up in such a place as this, Lottie. A part of me still doesn’t believe it has happened and that I am here at all. I wonder if that has been the saving of me from the madness that grips so many others here.

Your ever loving,

George