Burning Bright (5 page)

“That's it. You'll see him using it now and then, him an' his wife. Prints books an' such on it. Pamphlets, pictures, that sort o' thing. Dunno as he makes a living from 'em, though. I seen a few of 'em when I went looking to sell him some copper for his plates when he first moved here from across the river a year or two ago.” Dick Butterfield shook his head. “Strange things, they were. Lots o' fire an' naked people with big eyes, shouting.”

“You mean like Hell, Pa?” Maggie suggested.

“Maybe. Not my taste, anyway. I like a cheerful picture, myself. Can't see that many would buy 'em from him. He must get more from engraving for others.”

“Did he buy the copper?”

“Nah. I knew the minute I talked to him that he's not one to buy like that, for a fancy. He's his own man, is Mr. Blake. He'll go off an' choose his copper an' paper himself, real careful.” Dick Butterfield said this without rancor; indeed, he respected those who would clearly not be taken in by his ruses.

“We saw him with his
bonnet rouge
on last week, didn't we, Jem?” Maggie said. “He looked right funny in it.”

“He's a braver man than many,” Dick Butterfield declared. “Not many in London show such open support for the Frenchies, however they may talk in the pub. PM don't take kindly to it, nor the King neither.”

“Who's PM?” Jem asked.

Charlie Butterfield snorted.

“Prime Minister, lad. Mr. Pitt,” Dick Butterfield added a little sharply, in case the Dorset boy didn't know even that.

Jem ducked his head and gazed into his beer once more. Maggie watched him struggling across the table, and wished now that she had not brought him to meet her father. He did not understand what Dick Butterfield wanted from people, the sort of quick, smart talk required of those allowed to sit with him on the stool he kept hooked around his foot under the table. Dick Butterfield wanted to be informed and entertained at the same time. He was always looking for another way to make money—he made his living out of small, dodgy schemes dreamt up from pub talk—and he wanted to have fun doing it. Life was hard, after all, and what made it easier than a little laughter, as well as a little business putting money in his pocket?

Dick Butterfield could see when people were sinking. He didn't hold it against Jem—the boy's confused innocence made him feel rather tender toward him, and irritated at his own jaded children. He pushed Maggie abruptly from his knee so that she fell to the floor, where she stared up at him with hurt eyes. “Lord, child, you're getting heavy,” Dick said, jiggling his knee up and down. “You've sent my leg to sleep. You'll be needin' your own stool now you're getting to lady size.”

“Won't nobody give her one, though, and I'm not talking 'bout just the stool,” Charlie sneered. “Chicken-breasted little cow.”

“Leave off her,” Jem said.

All three Butterfields stared at him, Dick and Charlie leaning with their elbows on the table, Maggie still on the floor between them. Then Charlie lunged across the table at Jem, and Dick Butterfi eld put his arm out to stop him. “Give Maggie your stool and get another one,” he said.

Charlie glared at Jem but stood up, letting the stool fall backward, and stalked off. Jem didn't dare turn around to watch him but kept his eyes on the table. He took a gulp of beer. He'd defended Maggie as a reflex, the way he would his own sister.

Maggie got up and righted Charlie's stool, then sat on it, her face grim. “Thanks,” she muttered to Jem, though she didn't sound very grateful.

“So, Jem, your father's a bodger, is he?” Dick Butterfield said, opening the business part of the conversation since it seemed unlikely that Jem would entertain them further.

“Not a bodger, exactly, sir,” Jem answered. “He don't travel from town to town, an' he makes proper chairs, not the rickety ones bodgers make.”

“Course he does, lad, course he does. Where does he get his wood?”

“One of the timber yards by Westminster Bridge.”

“Whose yard? Bet I can get it for him cheaper.”

“Mr. Harris. Mr. Astley introduced Pa to him.”

Dick Butterfield winced at Philip Astley's name. Maggie's father could negotiate good deals most places, but not when Mr. Astley had got in before him. He and his landlord kept a wide berth of each other, though there was a grudging respect on both sides as well. If Dick Butterfield had been a wealthy circus owner, or Philip Astley a small-time rogue, they would have been remarkably similar.

“Well, if I hear of any cheaper wood, I'll let you know. Leave it with me, lad,” he added, as if it were Jem who'd approached him for advice. “I'll see what I can do. I'll call in one day, shall I, and have a word with your pa. I'm always happy to help out new neighbors. Now, you'll be expected back home, won't you? They'll be wonderin' what kept you.”

Jem nodded and got up from the stool. “Thank'ee for the beer, sir.”

“Course, lad.” Dick Butterfield hooked his foot around Jem's stool and dragged it back under the table. Maggie grabbed Jem's half-drunk beer and took a gulp. “Bye,” she said.

“Z'long.”

On his way out, Jem passed Charlie standing with a crowd of other young men. Charlie glared at him and shoved one of his friends so that he knocked into Jem. The youths laughed and Jem hurried out, glad to get away from the Butterfields. He suspected, however, that he would see Maggie again, even if she had not said, “Bye for now,” this time. Despite her brother and father, he wanted to. She reminded him of September blackberries, which looked ripe but could just as easily be sour as sweet when you ate them. Jem could not resist such a temptation.

Anne Kellaway sometimes felt that a cord was tied at one end to her wrist and at the other to the window in the front room. She would be scrubbing potatoes, or washing clothes, or cleaning the ash from the fire, and find herself at the most inconvenient moment—hands smeared with dirt, sheets half-wrung, ash dusting the air—tugged to the window to look out. Often there was nothing unusual to see, but occasionally she was rewarded with something worthwhile: a woman wearing a hat trimmed with long peacock feathers; a man cradling a pineapple as if it were a newborn baby; a boy carrying an uprooted bay tree, its leaves trimmed into the shape of a dove. Maisie or Jem would have called to the others to come and see these unusual sights, but Anne Kellaway preferred to keep such little moments of pleasure to herself.

Today there were no potatoes or ash or laundry keeping her away from the window: It was Easter Monday and she was meant to rest. Maisie and Jem were clearing up after their midday meal, leaving Anne Kellaway to gaze down at the crowds of people moving along Hercules Buildings, many of the women dressed in new Easter gowns and bonnets. She had never seen so much color, such bright cloth, such daring cuts, and such surprising trim on the bonnets. There were the usual daffodils and primroses as you might see on hats outside the Piddletrenthide church, but there were also exotic feathers, bunches of multicolored ribbons, even fruit. She herself would never wear a lemon on a bonnet, but she rather admired the woman passing who did. She preferred something simpler and more traditional: a plait of daisies or a posy of violets, or one ribbon, like the sky blue one she'd just seen dangling down a girl's back almost to her knees. Anne Kellaway would happily wear that, though she would not have it be quite so long. London women seemed to push the length of a ribbon or the angle of a hat just that bit further than Anne Kellaway would dare to herself.

Among the traffic walked a man with a tray of white crosses on his head, calling, “Hot-cross buns! Four a penny, cheap for Easter, hot-cross buns! Buy 'em now, last day till next year!” He stopped in front of the house, just below Anne Kellaway, having found a customer. From the other direction strolled Miss Pelham, her bonnet festooned with tiny yellow ribbons. Anne Kellaway snorted, trying to mask the laugh that had begun to bubble up.

“What is't, Ma?” Maisie asked, looking up from wiping clean the table.

“Nothing. Just Miss Pelham in a silly hat.”

“Let me see.” Maisie came over to the window, peered down, and began to giggle. “She looks like she's had a pile of straw dumped on her head!”

“Shh, Maisie, she'll hear you,” Anne Kellaway replied, though not very fiercely. As they watched, a gray horse pulling a peculiar two-wheeled vehicle trotted up the road, scattering bonnet wearers and potential bun buyers to the right and left. The cart had big wheels and peculiar dimensions, for though short and narrow, it had a high roof; on the side was a long vertical sign that proclaimed in black letters, ASTLEY'S ROYAL SALOON AND NEW AMPHITHEATRE
PROUDLY ANNOUNCES ITS
NEW SEASON
BEGINNING
TONIGHT!
SPECTACULAR ACTS TO EXCITE AND STIMULATE! DOORS OPEN 5.30 P.M., PROMPT START 6.30 P.M
.

Anne and Maisie Kellaway gaped as the gig drew up in front of Miss Pelham's house and a boy jumped down and said something to Miss Pelham, who frowned and pointed up at the Kellaways' window. Anne Kellaway shrank back, but was not quick enough at pulling Maisie out of sight as well.

“Wait, Ma, she's beckoning to us!” Maisie pulled Anne Kellaway forward again. “Look!”

Miss Pelham was still frowning—as she always did when anything to do with the Kellaways disturbed her—but she was indeed gesturing to them.

“I'll go down,” Maisie declared, turning toward the door.

“No, you won't.” Anne Kellaway stopped her daughter with a steely tone and a hand on her shoulder. “Jem, go and see what they want.”

Jem left the pot he had been scouring and raced down the stairs. Maisie and Anne watched from the window as he exchanged a few words with the boy, who then handed him something white. He stared at whatever it was he held, while the boy jumped back into the gig and the driver tapped his whip lightly on the horse's neck and sped away up Hercules Buildings toward Westminster Bridge Road.

Jem returned a moment later, a puzzled look on his face.

“What is't, Jem?” Maisie demanded. “Oh, what have you got?”

Jem looked down at some bits of paper in his hand. “Four tickets for Mr. Astley's show tonight, with his compliments.”

Thomas Kellaway looked up from the piece of beech he had been whittling.

“We're not going,” Anne Kellaway declared. “We can't afford it.”

“No, no, we don't have to pay. He's given them to us.”

“We don't need his charity. We could buy our own tickets if we wanted.”

“But you just said—” Maisie began.

“We're not going.” Anne Kellaway felt like a mouse chased by a cat from one side of a room to the other.

Jem and Maisie looked at their father. Thomas Kellaway was gazing at them all but did not say anything. He loved his wife, and wanted her to love him back. He would not go against her.

“Have you finished that pot, Jem?” Anne Kellaway asked. “Once you do we can go for our walk.” She turned away toward the window, her hands shaking.

Maisie and Jem exchanged glances. Jem went back to the pot.

In the two weeks they'd been in Lambeth, the Kellaways had not gone much beyond the streets immediately surrounding their house. They did not need to—all the shops and stalls they needed were on Lambeth Terrace by Lambeth Green, on Westminster Bridge Road, or on the Lower Marsh. Jem had been with his father to the timber yards by the river near Westminster Bridge; Maisie had gone with her mother to St. George's Fields to see about laying out their clothes there to dry. When Jem suggested that they go for a walk on Easter Monday across Westminster Bridge to see Westminster Abbey, all were keen. They were used to walking a great deal in the Piddle Valley and found it strange not to be so active in Lambeth.

They set out at one o'clock, when others were eating or sleeping or at the pub. “How shall we go, then?” Maisie asked Jem, knowing better than to direct the question at her parents. Anne Kellaway was clutching on to her husband's arm as if a strong wind were about to blow her away. Thomas Kellaway was smiling as usual and gazing about him, looking like a simpleton waiting to go wherever was chosen for him.

“Let's take a shortcut to the river and walk along it up to the bridge,” Jem said, knowing it had fallen to him to lead them, for he was the only Kellaway who had begun to become familiar with the streets.

“Not the shortcut that girl talked of, is't?” Anne Kellaway said. “I don't want to be going along any place called Cut-Throat Lane.”

“Not that one, Ma,” Jem lied, reasoning that it would take her a long time to work out that it was indeed Cut-Throat Lane. Jem had found it soon after Maggie told them about it. He knew his family would like the lane because it ran through empty fields; if you turned your back to the houses and didn't look too far ahead to Lambeth Palace or to the warehouses by the river, you could more or less think you were in the countryside. One day Jem would find the direction he needed to walk that would take him into countryside proper. Perhaps Maggie would know the way.

For now, he led his family up past Carlisle House, a nearby mansion, to Royal Row and along it to Cut-Throat Lane. It was very quiet there, with no one in the lane; and it being a holiday, few were out working in the vegetable gardens that dotted the fields. Jem was thankful too that it was sunny and clear. So often in Lambeth the sky was not blue, even on a sunny day, but thick and yellow with smoke from coal fires, and from the breweries and manufactories for vinegar and cloth and soap that had sprung up along the river. Yesterday and today, however, those places were shut, and because it was warm, many had not lit fires. Jem gazed up into the proper deep blue he knew well from Dorsetshire, coupled with the vivid green of the roadside grass and shrubs, and found himself smiling at these colors that were so natural and yet shouted louder than any London ribbon or dress. He began to walk more slowly, at a saunter rather than the quick, nervous pace he'd adopted since coming to Lambeth. Maisie paused to pick a few primroses for a posy. Even Anne Kellaway stopped clutching her husband and swung her arms. Thomas Kellaway began to whistle “Over the Hills and Far Away,” a song he often hummed when he was working.

Too soon the lane made a sharp right and skirted along the edges of the gardens surrounding Lambeth Palace. When they reached the river their short idyll ended. In front of them stood a series of dilapidated warehouses, flanked by rows of workmen's cottages. The warehouses were shut today, which added to their menacing atmosphere; normally the bustling action of the work made them more welcoming. Anne Kellaway took her husband's arm again.

Though Jem and Thomas Kellaway had been down to the Thames to buy wood and have it cut at the timber yards, the female Kellaways had only seen it briefly when they first arrived at Astley's Amphitheatre, and had not really taken it in. Now they had unwittingly chosen an unimpressive moment in which to get their first good look at the great London river. The tide was out, reducing the water to a thin, murky ribbon running through a wide, flat channel of gray silt that reminded Anne Kellaway of an unmade bed. Granted, even in its reduced state it was twenty times bigger than the Piddle, the river that ran alongside the Kellaways' garden in Piddletrenthide. Despite its small size, though, the Piddle still had the qualities Anne Kellaway looked for in a river—purposeful, relentless, cheerful, and cleansing, its sound a constant reminder of the world's movement.

The Thames was nothing like that. To Anne Kellaway it seemed not a river, but a long intestine that twisted each way out of sight. It did not have clear banks, either. The bed slid up toward the road, awash with pebbles and sludge, and it was easy enough to step straight from the road down into it. Despite the mud, children had done just that, and were running about in the riverbed, some playing, some picking out objects that had had been left exposed by the low tide: shoes, bottles, tins, bits of waterlogged wood and cloth, the head of a doll, a broken bowl.

The Kellaways stood and watched. “Look how dirty they're getting,” Maisie said as if she envied them.

“Hideous place,” Anne Kellaway stated.

“It looks better when the tide's in, like it were when we first arrived.” Jem felt he had to defend the river, as if it were the embodi-ment of London and his family's decision to move there.

“Funny it has a tide,” Maisie said. “I know our Piddle runs down to the sea somewhere, but it still always runs the same way. I'd feel topsy-turvy if it changed directions!”

“Let's go to the bridge,” Jem suggested. They began to step more quickly now, past the warehouses and the workmen's cottages. Some of the workers and their wives and children were sitting out in front of their houses, talking, smoking, and singing. Most of them fell silent as the Kellaways passed, except for a man playing a pipe, who played faster. Jem wanted to step up their pace even more, but Maisie slowed down. “He's playing ‘Tom Bowling,'” she said. “Listen!” She smiled at the man; he broke off playing and smiled back.

Anne Kellaway stiffened, then pulled at her daughter's arm. “Come along, Maisie!”

Maisie shook free and stood still in the middle of the road to join in singing the last verse in a high, clear voice:

She and the pipe player finished together, and there was a small silence. Anne Kellaway stifled a sob. Tommy and Maisie used to sing the song together in beautiful harmony.

“It be all right, Ma,” Maisie said. “We has to sing it still, for we don't want to forget Tommy, do we?” She bobbed at the man and said, “Thank'ee, sir. Ar'ernoon.”