Little Bones (16 page)

‘You look quite done in,’ Nell told her. ‘It’s like your eyes have taken a bashing.’

‘It’s the weather,’ said Jane. ‘I can’t sleep at all.’

‘And I can’t stay awake, more’s the pity, because I haven’t five blessed minutes to myself.’

The girls waiting to see the doctor, chewing the sodden ends of their handkerchiefs, reading the illustrated papers and waiting for a bed, were the girls from the touring summer companies. These homesick dull-eyed
dancers
had been on the road since May, stopping off in unfamiliar towns, sleeping in lodgings and looking for distractions. One poor inconvenienced girl couldn’t speak a word of English. Between them, Jane, Nell and the doctor tried to work out what she was saying. They thought she might be German, until she pointed to an old map of Cardiff and wept.

‘Miss Silverwood is leaving,’ Nell whispered, when they went onto the landing. ‘She’s moving to Bristol. She’s going to do all her business by correspondence, which means writing letters apparently.’

‘Why is she moving?’ asked Jane.

‘At first, she said she was going to stay with her sister, but then she had a couple of sherries too many, and said she was getting very jumpy, that she was too old for this game, and it had gone on long enough.’

‘What about you?’

‘Oh, I’m all right for now,’ said Nell. ‘She told me I could stay.’

‘Does it ever change?’ asked Mrs Swift, who had taken to her bed in the heat. ‘Do the girls ever get married and live happily ever after? All that pain, to be left in the end with nothing.’

Jane tried not to yawn. The air in the bedroom was stale. Suffocating. She could see a tiny brown cockroach marching up the wall. If she had the strength, she would pull the drapes wide open. She would lift the dust-caked window and stick her head outside.

‘You must think it a very strange profession,’ said Mrs Swift.

‘A doctor, ma’am? No.’

‘My husband wasn’t always a doctor,’ Mrs Swift yawned. ‘In another life, we were something else entirely.’

‘In Brighton, ma’am?’

‘In Brighton people waved. They would stop me in the street. Perfect strangers would pass the time of day. We would take high tea in dining rooms overlooking the promenade. At the Sandpiper they served cold poached salmon and a girl called Clarinda would remove all the bones.’

Jane glanced towards the window where the sun was burning the glass. ‘It sounds wonderful, ma’am.’

‘Oh it was, but due to lack of money we had to change our mode of employment. We were taken to the darker side of life. And though to some extent it has been to our benefit, I never realised the need would be quite so great. Or that my husband would have to act the physician for such a length of time.’

‘He’s very good, ma’am,’ said Jane, and for the most part, she believed it.

‘Brighton was sparkling.’

‘London can sparkle.’

‘London can sparkle when it rains.’

‘Have you been to the waxworks?’ asked Jane. ‘I’m told they’re very realistic. Or the zoological gardens? It’s supposed to be a fascinating place, full of wild beasts and birds.’

‘It’s a long way from this house.’

‘You can get a bus on the Strand.’

‘A bus,’ she said, ‘would kill me.’

Jane suddenly felt the air turning cold. Mrs Swift hadn’t noticed the temperature change. She was fanning herself with a church magazine.

‘Can you feel that, ma’am?’ she said.

‘Feel what?’

‘The air has turned to ice,’ said Jane.

Mrs Swift laughed. ‘Ice?’ she said. ‘Really? It is like sitting in an oven.’

Pulling up a sleeve, Jane could see the goose bumps springing down her arm. ‘Look at me,’ she said. ‘I’m shivering.’

‘Then perhaps someone is walking on your grave?’

‘Do you believe in ghosts?’

Mrs Swift looked towards the mantelpiece. It was full of framed photographs. ‘Ghosts are nothing but memories,’ she said. ‘Memories you can’t quite leave behind.’

Jane followed her gaze, rubbing the cold from her arms. Her nerves prickled and danced across her backbone. The photographs showed women with long faces. A man in an apron. A small boy holding a kite. ‘But the people, ma’am, these memories, can you see them?’

Mrs Swift took a minute before answering. ‘In my head I can see them, in reality they are gone.’

Jane moved a little closer to the pictures. The faces were vivid. Piercing. She wanted to say, what if they haven’t quite gone? What if you don’t want to see them?’ Instead, she turned around and said, ‘Miss Silverwood’s going to Bristol.’

‘Bristol?’ she said. ‘It isn’t far enough.’

Sitting in her tent that night, Jane told herself that Mrs Swift was right: ghosts were what you made of them. Birds riding perambulators weren’t ghosts. No!
They
were simply wild imaginings. Her father believed, but Arthur also believed in witches and goblins, saying, ‘If I believe, they’ll have nothing to prove, they’ll leave me well alone and go bothering those blighters who don’t.’

Her father had told her stories. How invisible hands played pianos in the night. Chairs had moved from room to room. Dogs had barked at nothing.

‘A woman in Liverpool once found her knives and forks dancing on the draining board.’

‘What did she do?’ gasped Jane.

‘According to the paper,’ he’d said, ‘the poor woman fainted, and from that day on, she only ever ate with her fingers.’

Yawning, Jane collapsed the tent, keeping the sheet tight around her, but when she put her head on the pillow she started. Something small and hard was pressing into her shoulder, and when her fingers started to grope, they found the doll’s missing eye, and its vivid green iris seemed to blink at her in the moonlight.

Dr Swift now looked so unkempt, his intake of whisky so huge that even the sweat on his clothes had a scent of it. He had gravy stains on his once pristine necktie. His cuffs were frayed. He had holes in the knees of his trousers from where he had tripped on a cobblestone. At Axford Square, Nell ushered him into the kitchen, where she attempted to sponge off the dust.

‘It wasn’t my fault,’ said the doctor. ‘London is in need of some repair.’

The girl taking the tincture did not look in the least bit surprised by the doctor’s appearance. She had not seen the old Dr Swift with his polished boots and cufflinks. Having come with no great expectation other than hope, she thought on the whole things could have been worse.

‘Don’t breathe a word,’ the girl whispered to Jane, ‘but the man was married, and I’m still seeing the handsome scoundrel, on and off.’

Jane appeared understanding, but she had other things on her mind, like those small hand-shaped shadows that came waving in her dreams every night, or the noise of babies crying, or the muted whoops of a schoolyard that hung in the air at midnight. She had thrown the doll’s eye into the back of a moving ash cart, where it had sent a little puff of grey into the air, and in her dreams she saw it sitting in the dust, hatching like an egg into other, smaller eyes.

Leaving the doctor to sleep it off in one of the empty bedrooms, Jane went into the kitchen where Nell made them tea.

‘Look at this,’ said Nell, holding out a sheet of paper and smoothing it straight on her skirt. ‘It came yesterday.’

It was a very brief note from Miss Silverwood, now living in the Clifton area of Bristol. ‘Nell,’ said the note. ‘Watch the doctor. He is getting to be a danger. Write to me AT ONCE if you are worried.’

‘And are you worried?’ asked Jane.

‘Yes,’ said Nell, reaching for the teapot, ‘but not enough to lose my livelihood for it.’

Walking home, Jane found the doctor something of
an
embarrassment. The way he constantly tripped over himself, dropping his bag, dithering outside a pie shop, staring at the menu board, licking his lips so lasciviously the pie-man came out and made him move along.

‘Are you all right, sir?’ said Jane.

‘Just a little thirsty,’ he said, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the fraying end of his coat sleeve. ‘We’ll stop off at the Cock and I’ll treat you to a glass of their finest lemonade.’

The public house was quiet. Most of its regular drinkers were out in the yard, shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow, throwing dice and taking bets on the outcome. Ned’s preacher was sitting in a booth scratching at his sermon.

Jane sat near the empty fireplace as the doctor slid his way towards the barman. She felt nervous. The smell of stale beer made her think of the other public houses she had visited, looking for her parents. She had waited with Agnes on the back steps of the Pilot for hours. The landlady had taken pity on them. She had brought them a bite to eat, a slice of pie and a sweet juicy pickle, knowing the girls would starve at home, where the cupboards often held nothing but a few empty gin bottles and a tin of Zebra grate polish.

The doctor appeared with a large glass of brandy, a mug of ale, and Jane’s lemonade. ‘Is someone else coming, sir?’ she asked, looking at the door.

‘No one.’ The doctor slid the glass towards her. ‘I told you I was thirsty. I’ll take the ale to slake the thirst, and then I’ll drink the brandy for the taste.’

Jane sipped her lemonade as the doctor wiped his
foamy
mouth across his coat sleeve. She frowned. What had happened to the man who had been most particular about his appearance? The man who wore cord and silk cufflinks and sandalwood cologne? Who sometimes pushed a flower into his buttonhole, a gesture that had always delighted the girls, because who would have thought
that kind of doctor
would appear so smart and gentrified?

‘Have you caught anything recently, sir?’ said Jane.

‘Have I what?’ He looked puzzled for a moment, but then he shook his head. ‘No, it has been a very poor summer season.’

Jane turned to look at the sky through the window, then she yawned very loudly. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she reddened.

‘It’s the heat,’ he said, now yawning himself. ‘And as you can see, yawning is highly contagious.’

‘I am very tired, sir,’ she admitted. ‘I can’t sleep at all for having the most terrible dreams and notions.’

‘What notions?’

‘Like someone might be watching me.’

The doctor glanced behind him. ‘Who?’ he said. ‘Are you being followed?’

‘Oh no, sir, not followed. It is more like an imagining, sir. More … like a ghost.’

‘A ghost?’ The doctor looked thoughtful. ‘Would you like some sound advice?’ he said. ‘Tell your ghost to go away. Whoever they are, and whatever they are doing, you must tell them to leave you well alone.’

Jane looked surprised. The doctor hadn’t laughed at her. ‘Do you think it will work, sir?’ she asked.

‘Most definitely. I have read about such things.’

‘Then I’ll do it,’ she said. ‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Now, this would help you sleep,’ he said, rattling around in his pocket for more brandy money. ‘And it would help ease the aching in your bones.’

‘No thank you, sir,’ she said. ‘I don’t care for alcohol, though I have drunk wine, and I’ve tasted a drop of champagne.’

‘Champagne?’ he smiled. ‘And how?’

‘My father was working at Epsom, and when one of the horses won a big race, the owner bought champagne, and Pa went and swiped it.’

‘Is he in prison?’

‘No sir, Kent.’

As the doctor polished off another glass of brandy, the preacher came to life, rattling his papers. From the window, Jane could see a girl with Ned’s sign around her shoulders. What was she doing? For a moment, she thought about asking the preacher, though when she saw his sorry state – his rolling eyes, his thick red beard stained with tobacco and hanging into his beer pot – she thought better of it. The sign looked too heavy for the girl’s narrow shoulders. When Jane stepped outside she could see the girl was small, perhaps ten years old, though in a certain light her face looked drawn and ancient. Her mud-coloured hair had been tied into plaits with string. She had a stain on her dress like a handprint.

‘Where’s Ned?’ asked Jane.

The girl looked startled, but then her face began to change. ‘Are you the cripple Jane? I’m Susannah, Ned’s sister. He’s ill,’ she said. ‘Is that your doctor?’ She pointed at Dr Swift, now holding onto the doorframe as he placed
one
boot very carefully onto the next step down. ‘Could he come and see Ned?’

‘He’s not that sort of doctor.’

‘But we’re desperate. We’ll see any doctor, as long as they’re charitable.’

‘He only sees women,’ Jane told her.

‘Well, apart from the obvious aren’t we all the same? Ned can hardly breathe. Lungs are something we both have, aren’t they? Even dogs have lungs.’

As the doctor picked his way towards them, holding tightly onto his bag, Susannah looked hopeful. ‘What have we here?’ he said. ‘“Believe in the Lord”? Well, we all need reminding now and then.’

‘My brother’s very sick, sir.’

‘And does he believe in the Lord?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well, I am sure it must help.’

Susannah touched his coat sleeve. ‘Won’t you come and look at him, sir? We don’t live very far. We could be there in ten minutes.’

The doctor stepped backwards. ‘Impossible. Even if I had ten minutes. Jane will explain.’

‘That you only see women, sir?’

‘That’s right. I’m a very busy man. I’ve more girls to see this afternoon.’

‘I’ll do anything,’ she told him.

‘I’m sure you would, but between you and me, I’d be no more use than the rat-catcher.’

As the doctor stumbled towards home, Jane apologised, saying perhaps another doctor might be found, and she had heard some hospitals these days didn’t charge a penny.

‘Oh, we’ve tried to get a doctor, but it seems they’re all run off their feet, what with this heat bringing all sorts of nasty things off the river. A quack called Parker promised he would call yesterday. He never turned up.’

‘Is Ned bad?’

‘He’s getting worse than bad,’ she said.

That night, Jane waited for the ghosts. She had steeled herself. Taking the doctor’s advice she would tell these bothersome spectres to leave her well alone. At first she sat with her arms folded. She practised looking meaningful and surly. When a girl appeared in the corner, Jane crumpled. The iridescent girl was dressed like a miniature nun. Jane tried to speak. Nothing came out; her folded arms were locked across her chest. When she looked across the room, the girl in the corner was pulling beads from her mouth, like a music-hall act, like the girl who pulled pennies from her throat. Eventually, Jane found a desperate inner strength. She moved her arms and pointed. ‘Go!’ she said. ‘Go away from this place. Leave me alone. All of you! Vanish!’ The girl looked at her. She held her gaze for a few seconds longer. Then she let the beads fall, and when the rosary hit the floor, bouncing and breaking, the girl disappeared. Jane lay back on the bed exhausted as the room warmed and settled.