Mermaids Singing (22 page)

Bella had tried every theatre manager in the West End and been turned down by all of them.

‘It’s so unfair,’ Kitty cried, one morning at breakfast. ‘Why does everyone take Sir Desmond’s side?’

‘Because men always have the upper hand,’ Maria said, paring thin slices from a loaf of stale bread. ‘I’ve a good mind to join that there Women’s Suffrage Society we keep hearing about.’

‘We need money,’ Bella said, pushing her teacup aside. ‘It’s no use railing against Desmond and men in general. We have to help ourselves, for no one else is going to.’

‘Oh, yes! And how do we do that when we’re close to starvation?’ demanded Maria. ‘You’ve tried every theatre in London and been shown the door. Doesn’t that make you hate bloody Mableton?’

‘Hating Desmond won’t put food on the table. I can still sing and act. There must be some theatre manager who will give me a chance.’

‘That’s the last of the bread and the marg,’ Maria said, scraping a tiny amount of margarine onto a slice of bread. ‘Take it up to Betty with a cup of tea, there’s a good girl, Kitty.’

‘I’ll go back to my old patch on the foreshore,’ Kitty said. ‘Even if it’s only a few pennies a day, at least it will help.’

‘And they’ll be fishing your dead body out of the Thames if that bugger Sid should come across you,’ Maria said, punctuating her words by stabbing actions with the bread knife.

‘There’s no need for Kitty to put herself in danger,’ Bella said, jumping to her feet. ‘If they won’t give me a job up West, I’ll go back to the East End, where I started.’

Maria dropped the knife with an exclamation of disgust. ‘You’re still Lady Mableton. You’ve risen above that sort of life.’

‘No, Ma,’ Bella said, slowly. ‘I’m still the same person. Marrying Desmond didn’t make me a lady.’

‘No, Madam, but it gave you money, position and respectability.’

‘And look where that got me. Anyway, I’d never have married Desmond if you hadn’t kept on and on at me.’

‘You’d have wasted your life waiting for Rackham to come back,’ Maria said, with a sarcastic curl of her lip. ‘We had comfort and security while you were married to Mableton. You’d never have had that with Rackham.’

‘I hate Rackham,’ Bella cried passionately. ‘And I loathe Desmond. My life with him was a living hell. The only good thing that came of it was Leonie and now he’s taken her away from me.’

‘You, you, you!’ Maria said, her eyes glinting angrily. ‘I sacrificed my own identity to make you look good. Mableton wouldn’t have looked at you twice if he’d known that your mother was half gypsy and your father kept a pub in the Commercial Road.’

‘That was your idea,’ Bella said, snatching up her hat and cape. ‘I never asked you to do that. I never wanted to live a lie.’

Maria stared at her for a moment and her anger seemed to evaporate. She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Perhaps it was, but don’t think it was easy for me to act the servant in my own daughter’s house.’

‘I know it wasn’t, Ma,’ Bella said, her expression softening. ‘I know you did it for the best.’

‘And you can’t go roaming round the East End on your own,’ Maria said, untying her apron strings. ‘I’ll come with you.’

‘I don’t need a chaperone, thanks all the same.’

‘Let me come with you, Bella,’ pleaded Kitty.

Pausing in the doorway, Bella smiled. ‘Thank you, Kitty dear, but I really can look after myself.’

Snatching up Betty’s breakfast tray, Kitty followed Bella to the front door. ‘Take care.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Bella said, as she closed the door. ‘I’ll be fine.’

She is so beautiful, Kitty thought, as she trudged up the stairs. Bella is so kind and so brave. If only some nice theatre manager would give her a fresh start. How could anyone refuse to help someone who was so sweet and lovely and sang like a nightingale?

She went into the sitting room where Betty was still in bed with the covers pulled up to her chin. Kitty shivered. The room was freezing and her breath curled out in front of her like puffs of steam from a kettle. For weeks, there had been no money to buy coal for the fire, and damp patches had spread in great blots on the walls.

‘Here’s your breakfast, Betty. How do you feel today?’

‘I’m not very hungry, Kitty love. You eat my breakfast or Maria will tell me off.’

Kitty put the tray down on the pine chest of drawers. ‘You must keep your strength up,’ she said, perching on the edge of the bed. ‘What would Jem say if he could see you like this?’

Betty closed her eyes and her pale lashes stood out against the bruise-like shadows beneath them. ‘Jem is far, far away. Anything can happen at sea. He might never come home again.’

Kitty seized her by the shoulders and shook her hard. ‘Don’t you dare say things like that. I won’t hear of it. Jem is safe and well. I’d know it in my bones if there was anything wrong.’ Kitty plunged her hand down inside her blouse and pulled out the half-sovereign that she had pierced and threaded on a piece of ribbon. ‘We’re like this, Jem and me, two halves of the same coin, like brother and sister. He’ll be home in a few months’ time and he’ll expect you to be the ma he remembers, not some pale skeleton what’s lost the will to live.’

‘Oh, Kitty, don’t you shout at me,’ sobbed Betty. ‘I know what you say is true but I haven’t got the strength to drag my body from this bed.’

Clutching the piece of gold, Kitty felt tears burn the back of her eyelids. The thought of parting with her half of the coin was as painful as losing an arm or leg, but she couldn’t stand by and see Jem’s mother fading away through lack of food and warmth. She knew exactly what she must do.

Old Sparks, the pawnbroker, peered at her over the top of his steel-rimmed specs as he held the piece of coin between his thumb and forefinger. When he opened his mouth to bite the gold, Kitty caught a waft of foul breath from blackened and broken teeth. ‘I’ll give you a florin, young Kitty,’ he said. ‘Not a penny more.’

‘But it’s worth more than that.’

‘Not to me it ain’t. Cutting coins of the realm in half is against the law, don’t you know that? I’ll give you two shillings for scrap and that’s my last word.’

Reluctantly Kitty held out her hand.

‘I wouldn’t let Sid Cable know you’ve got money,’ Sparks said as he dropped the coins onto her palm. ‘You been home yet, young ’un?’

Kitty shook her head, closing her fingers over the metal, and feeling a cold shiver run down her spine. ‘No, why?’

‘Word gets round,’ Sparks said, tapping the side of his nose with a grimy finger poking out of a black mitten, ‘and it ain’t good.’

Icy fingers of fear clutched at Kitty’s heart as she left the pawnshop. Bowing her head in the face of the nagging east wind, she hurried along the quay wall. The tea-coloured water of the Thames was pockmarked with sleet and it rattled off the decks of boats moored alongside. Passing Tanner’s Passage Kitty broke into a run, her anxiety for Maggie and the children overcoming her terror of coming face to face with Sid. Her footsteps echoed eerily in the dark passage that opened out into Sugar Yard, but there was no one about and she entered the building unseen. She raced up the stairs, her feet crunching on the carapaces of scuttling cockroaches. She stopped outside the door, pressing her ear against the keyhole, listening for the sound of voices. Satisfied that if Maggie was there, she was alone, Kitty turned the handle and went inside.

Stuffing her hand in her mouth to stifle a cry of horror, Kitty threw herself down on her knees beside Maggie, who lay on the box bed, like a broken doll. Her face was so bruised, bloody and swollen that she was almost unrecognisable. For a terrible moment Kitty thought she was dead.

‘Maggie, Maggie, speak to me,’ Kitty cried, chafing her lifeless hands. ‘Oh, Maggie, please don’t be dead.’

Maggie’s eyelids fluttered and a small sigh escaped from her swollen lips; a trickle of blood oozed from the corner of her mouth.

‘Thank God,’ Kitty cried, leaping to her feet. She grabbed a pitcher of water from the table and poured some into a tin cup. Kneeling at Maggie’s side, she lifted her head and held the cup to her lips.

Maggie gulped thirstily, spilling more water than she managed to swallow. ‘Kitty?’

‘I’m here, Maggie,’ Kitty said, hugging Maggie and rocking her like a baby. ‘Poor Maggie, what has that wicked sod done to you?’

Maggie struggled to sit upright, staring around the room, wide-eyed and trembling. ‘Where is Harry?’

Muffled sobs from the children’s room made Kitty leap to her feet. Flinging the door open, she found Harry sitting in the middle of the mattress, clutching a piece of rag to his mouth. He had wet himself in his fright and he stared at her with big, scared eyes, like some small wild animal.

Sweeping him up in her arms, Kitty cuddled him, ignoring his sodden, smelly baby dress. ‘Harry, it’s me, Kitty.’

He had stopped crying but dry sobs wracked his small body. ‘There, there,’ Kitty said, carrying him back into the living room. ‘Kitty’s here now. Everything will be all right.’ She picked her way through the debris of smashed crockery and the splintered remains of a wooden chair. ‘Where are the nippers, Maggie?’

‘Sid hadn’t come home last night. I’d just sent them off to school when he came in roaring drunk. He wanted money but there weren’t none. I don’t remember much else.’

Kitty was silent for a moment, staring around her and wondering how she ever lived in such disgusting conditions. The air was stale and thick with the smell of mildew and mice droppings; she could hear rats scuttling around behind the skirting boards. She turned back to Maggie, who lay on the straw mattress looking more like a skeleton than a woman not yet twenty-five. Fear turned to white-hot rage, boiling inside her. ‘I’m taking you away from this dreadful place and from him forever, Maggie.’

‘It’s no good, Kitty,’ Maggie said, closing her eyes. ‘He’d seek us out and he’d kill me.’

‘He’s killing you now,’ Kitty said, rubbing her cheek on Harry’s downy head. ‘I’ll not leave you again. You’re coming with me to Betty’s house and I’ll fetch the kids from school.’

‘He’ll find us for sure.’

‘If Sid comes near the place, I’ll go to the police and tell them it was him that raped me. I’ll see him in jail before I’ll let you spend another minute in this midden.’

‘I daren’t, Kitty,’ Maggie said, struggling to a sitting position. ‘How will you feed and clothe us all? We’ll end up in the workhouse.’

‘Never,’ Kitty said, shaking her head. ‘You’re coming with me.’

With Kitty’s help, Maggie managed to walk as far as Betty’s house before she collapsed in the hallway. With Harry sucking his thumb and perched on her hip, Kitty went to the kitchen to break the news to Maria, whose initial angry reaction dissolved into one of shock when she saw Maggie.

‘Good God above,’ Maria said, hooking Maggie’s arm around her shoulder. ‘What a state you’re in!’ She hoisted Maggie to her feet. ‘Come into the kitchen and let’s have a look at those cuts and bruises. Kitty, you’d better go upstairs and speak to Betty. It’s her house, when all’s said and done.’

Taking Harry with her, Kitty went up to Betty’s room. She appeared to be sleeping but, on hearing Kitty’s footsteps, she opened her eyes. Kitty explained briefly what had happened.

‘Them poor little mites,’ Betty said, snapping upright in her bed. ‘Living with an evil brute like Sid Cable. Put Maggie to bed in the boxroom, Kitty. I’ll get dressed and fetch the children from school.’

Untangling Harry’s stubby fingers from her hair, Kitty stared anxiously at Betty. ‘You haven’t eaten a proper meal for weeks. Are you sure you can walk that far?’

‘Yes, and further still if it means bringing the little ones to safety,’ Betty said, two bright dots of colour flaming her cheeks as she swung her legs over the side of the bed. ‘Just let Sid Cable come knocking on my door and he’ll be sorry, that’s all I can say.’

Bella came home that evening looking pale and exhausted. She was almost bowled over by seven-year-old Frankie, who had just tumbled down the stairs. Kitty came out of the kitchen, gave him a playful cuff round the ear, and told him to go and play in the back yard with the others.

Maria and Betty were in the middle of cooking supper, having spent Kitty’s florin on groceries at the corner shop. Revived by a cup of hot, sweet tea, Bella sat at the table and listened, wide-eyed with horror, as they told her of Maggie’s plight.

‘Of course we must look after them,’ Bella said, reaching out and clasping Kitty’s hand. ‘That man is a beast and it’s up to us to keep Maggie and the children safe.’

‘I agree,’ Maria said, stirring a pan of soup. ‘But Gawd knows how we’re going to live.’

‘Well, there’s my good news,’ Bella said, smiling. ‘I’ve got bottom billing at the Aldgate Palace of Varieties.’

Kitty jumped up to hug her and Betty clapped her hands.

Maria frowned. ‘Bottom of the bill? You were top of the bill before.’

‘It’s a start,’ Bella said calmly. ‘The only problem is, I need a costume.’

Maria slammed the lid on the saucepan. ‘When do you start?’

‘Tomorrow night! I need a costume by tomorrow night.’

‘That’s impossible,’ Maria said. ‘We’ve nothing left to pawn and not a decent gown between us.’

‘You could make a dress for Bella,’ Kitty said, looking hopefully at Betty.

‘The rheumatics have made me clumsy,’ Betty said, looking down at her swollen fingers. ‘I don’t think I can hold a needle any more. But perhaps I could cut a pattern, if we had some material.’

‘And Maria and I can sew the seams,’ Kitty said, eagerly. ‘You’ve got a box full of scraps of ribbon and lace, Betty.’

Betty’s eyes brightened for a moment and then she sighed, shaking her head. ‘We need more than scraps, Kitty.’

‘I’ve nothing left of value,’ Bella said, staring down at her bare fingers. ‘My wedding ring went before Christmas and my gold earrings.’

Betty tugged at the band of gold on her left hand, sucking her finger and grimacing with pain as she wrenched it over her swollen knuckle. She laid the ring on the table. ‘You’ve been good to me since our Poll passed away, and it’s time I did something for you. We should get a few shillings for this and that should be enough to get a bolt of taffeta from the market. I can cut, if all of you can help with the stitching, and we’ll send Bella off in style.’