Mr. Timothy: A Novel (14 page)

--More nicer boots.

--And what did this man say to you?

--He say you come.... A large bubble of air ripples down her throat. She clamps a hand across her mouth, and whatever it is that has surged up inside her subsides through the sheer force of her breathing, which seems to issue through every pore of her face.

--It's all right, Philomela. We don't have to speak of it any more at present.

Her hand fidgets inside her apron, and for a half-crazed moment, I think she intends to pay me for the food--in fistfuls of copper nails--but what actually emerges is a string of black and white wooden beads, badly chapped and in one section virtually crushed.

--Gor! Why don't she wear 'em round her neck like a normal gal?

So absorbed have I been in our conversation that I have failed to note the return of Colin the Melodious, clutching his bundle closer in mild alarm.

--And what the hell's she
squeezin
' 'em for?

--They're rosary beads, Colin. For praying. Roman Catholics use them.

--Well, it ain't bloody Sunday, is it?

--No, it's not. Some people pray every day of the week.

--Waste o' good air, you ask me. Here, Filly, they was out of porridge, so I got us some pasties.

With a lack of ceremony that may be deliberate, he drops one of his prizes into the trammel of her apron. His reward is a glare of such magnitude as to force him back a pace. He turns an incredulous eye on me.

--Don't they eat pasties in Africa?

--
Italy
, Colin. Italy is in Europe.

--Same difference to me, I'm sure.

We're all of us rather peckish, it turns out. For the next few minutes, we do nothing but eat, verily
brooding
over our viscous pasties, worrying them down like beggars. Philomela, not surprisingly, is soonest done, and as she waits for us to catch up, she undergoes a subtle alchemical change. The girl by the Hungerford Pier reemerges, in all her withering independence. Folding her mouth downward, she jabs me in the lapel.

--Trade.

Even with his mouth full, Colin is ready with an answer:

--Rooster. In a henhouse.

On the whole, "rooster" strikes me as a rather flattering term for it.

--What sort name Teem-thee? --Well, that's my Christian name. My surname is Cratchit.

--Kra-shit.

--Mm. Perhaps we should stay with Christian names for now.

--Fine idea, says Colin.

Her pasty consumed, Philomela clasps her hands in her lap and looks expectantly around, as though she had arranged this very spot for her next appointment. Around her mouth a thin necklace of crumbs has formed, mysteriously troubling--I have to resist the urge to wipe her mouth clean.

--Philomela, do you have any notion of where you're bound? Or what your...your
object
in life may be?

She looks at me.

--I am get by.

--Yes, but you might get by a little easier if you accepted help, you know. If you...well, if you came back with me, for instance.

Even as I say it, I gird myself for the recoil. Surely, surely she will pick up and run, halfway back to Italy if need be, so appalled must she be at the very suggestion. And yet there is no hint of revulsion in her face. No response of any kind, in fact.

--I don't mean with
me
, exactly, but you could always stay with Mary Catherine, she's the maid, and I know she has a cot free, and no one would bother you. And then, once you were all settled in, we might, you know, we might think about...

About what?

This, finally, is what stops me: the thin gruel of possibilities.

The workhouse. The poor-law school. The training school. An obliging orphanage in Seven Dials or, God help her, some charitable institution with rope-necked spinsters ready to beat Christ into her from sunup to sundown. And all to the end of making her a dressmaker's apprentice by fourteen, so she can pull half that many shillings a week and watch gay ladies rake in twenty quid. How long then? How long before Philomela joins the troop of rouged dollymops catching soldiers' eyes outside Knightsbridge Music Hall, soliciting teen-age boys in Grosvenor Place? Hauled up by the police twice a year...treated for the clap once a month at the local infirmary....

I rub my hands, briskly.

--Well, we have time to decide all that, don't we? But for now, we need to put you in the way of food and clothes.

--I have food close.

--Not enough, surely. --I have food close.

--We can also give you a roof over your head. So you won't freeze to death.

She is so impassive now I think perhaps she is already freezing to death, degree by degree. Colin may be of the same mind, for he leaps to his feet and yowls straight into her face:

--Come, Filly, don't be a daft bitch! Can't you see he's ready to piss money on you? I'm tellin' you, it's a fuckin' entre-pre-noorial opportunity!

The girl's nostrils flare open as her head whips towards mine.

--What he say?

--Nothing worth attending to. Listen to me, Philomela. This is the last time of asking. You may come with us, or you may go your own way. The decision is entirely yours.

In later days, perhaps, I will wonder what it was that swayed her to our side. I will wonder if it was the sincerity of my expression or the violence of Colin's outburst or perhaps just the prevailing weather. But for now, I incline towards the potato. I believe that from deep in her belly, that potato is quietly vouching for us. Because you see, I picked it with some care.

Philomela brushes the crumbs from her mouth, pats the ribbon in her hair, rewinds the scarf round her pale neck. And as she rises to her feet, everything about her conveys the same attitude: engagement without compliance. She will travel down this road a league or two; she will accept us as temporary companions; that is all.

And just to be sure I understand, she pats her apron. From its inner compartment comes a jangling of nails.

--For room. I pay you.

How we must look, our little triumvirate, travelling in a westerly procession down the Strand--three distinct nations in uneasy entente. Philomela holds back a yard, as though to express her grave reservations, and Colin strides militarily forward, gaining several yards on us only to circle back with a look of chaffing obligation. And me? I simply whirl between them, in little orbits of irrelevance. Not really a nation at all--indeed, in my spattered hat and clothes, I resemble nothing so much as those men who cluster every day by Uncle N's drawing-room fire. One more sycophant for charity, dragging along a pair of glamourously dirty children.

The climate here is altogether different from Drury Lane Garden. No drifts of mud, no patches of ice; the street-sweeping machines have been indefatigable, and even the manure has been gathered into discreet, cairnlike piles. Broughams, hansoms, the occasional coach and six...gentlefolk may stay gentle here.

Just past Charing Cross Hospital, we come upon a long arcade, ceilinged over with glass domes and bisected by parallel rows of toy shops from which pour great regiments of children. Elegant, almost painterly children, dressed like little bankers and tea-party hostesses, in silk hats and gleaming boots...and, for all that, carrying on like a brood of mudlarks, pounding on toy drums, wrestling one another over dolls and wooden horses and tin soldiers. One boy, temporarily toyless, contents himself with shrieking at the pigeons that skitter along the glass.

By unspoken agreement, we have stopped here. Colin and Philomela gaze upon their contemporaries, assimilating every line of clothing, every shape and style of artifact. At last they have found a common purpose. And how gratifying it would be to step into one of these shops and buy them something, even the littlest of somethings. But it seems to me what they most covet are the things I could never attain for them: the genial giants who hover over this scene like deities, indulging whims and adjudicating squabbles and promising to make it up to their darlings next Christmas. No, those particular items come rather dear this time of year.

--Come along now, I say.--We should be going.

I hadn't intended that we should walk the whole way. But somehow the prospect of bundling the three of us into a cab seems fantastical. Then, too, the sleet and rain have stopped for now, although what has taken their place is scarcely better for walking: a hard damp fist of wind, pressing our eyes back in their sockets. It whets itself on the corners of the buildings, then surges down the streets, centrifugal and centripetal all at once, and so human in its purpose that the creakings of the cart wheels and lampposts are like the protests of a beaten woman. As we turn one corner, my hat is nearly blown off my head. I have to clutch it against my chest and press my umbrella to my stomach and bend my torso parallel to the ground, while on either side of me Colin and Philomela assume the same angle, and together we lean into the wall of wind and drive it before us until it seems we are driving all of London. And just as London appears to be on the verge of winning, the wind dies suddenly, and we raise ourselves up and stand in the middle of the pavement, dazed and blinking and startled to find ourselves no longer alone. The shambling, wide-eyed vision of a beggar woman has materialised before us, and the feel of the wind is still so strong in my bones that the only question she sparks in me is: From which district has she blown? Islington? Stepney?

--The blessings of the Christmas season upon you and yours, sir.

A large woman, tottering and lurching, with a wheedling way of inclining her face towards mine and a high, raspy voice whose educated vowels belong not to a beggar--my error--but to a more alarming species: the missionary.

Ah, yes. The plain white bonnet. The black woollen dress, bunching always in the most unusual places, and the hair parted brusquely in the middle and pinned back so severely that it seems to be taking the rest of her face along with it. And the Bible, of course, almost completely smothered in the recesses of her armpit.

--What a sight is this, sir! You have taken pity on an unfortunate angel, good Christian soul that you are. She is not your own, I think?

--She is no relation, no.

With an agility that surprises me, the missionary lowers herself onto her haunches until her face is level with the girl's.

--Hello, pretty pretty. We have met before. Do you recall?

If Philomela does, she's not telling. --It was on the occasion of your dear father's funeral, remember? I said you might come with me if you liked, but you ran off, and now look at you! Soaked to the bone and ready to catch your death. When all this time you might have found a warm, toasty bed with us.

She tilts her face upwards and reveals all thirty-two of her formidable teeth.

--My manners, sir! Forgive me. I am Miss Binny, of the Bible Flower Mission. And you are...?

--Mr. Cratchit. Of no affiliation.

--Ah, but you are beloved of us, surely. You have returned our little flower to us. We have been so wretched, wondering what had become of her. I don't need to tell you, we have been praying ceaselessly, and now the good Lord has seen fit to answer our prayers! And just in time for Christmas! What a gift you have bestowed upon us, sir.

She strokes the girl's hair, gathers her ringlets into tight little strands, and begins coiling them into informal braids. Philomela submits to these ministrations rather as a horse submits to being shod.

--I must tell you, Miss Binny, this strikes me as a rather sudden incursion. And since I am unfamiliar with your organisation, I can't be sure what you intend for this girl.

--Why, we offer only the word of the Lord and the company of like-minded pilgrims. We let God settle the rest.

--Yes, well, I think God has been a little off the mark lately. There are many more children where she came from.

--One soul at a time, Mr. Cratchit, one soul at a time.

I wouldn't have thought that smile could stretch much wider, but it does, crawls almost to her ears--not so much a smile any more as an unstitched wound. She rests her large hands on Philomela's shoulders.

--Would you care to come with me, pretty pretty? We've a bed already waiting just a few blocks away, and you'll find many friends your age.

For a second or two, I am convinced that Philomela is actually considering the offer. But it turns out she is simply weighing the appropriate response, which is to prise Miss Binny's hands from her shoulders--first one, then the other--fold her arms across her chest, summon the most penetrating from amongst her large retinue of frowns, and pronounce:

--I will thank you, no.

The smile leaps from Miss Binny's face. She whirls back to me.

--Oh, sir, you must reason with her. She really oughtn't to be wandering the streets like this!

--She is
not
wandering, I can attest to that. And as for accepting your kind offer, I believe she has made herself tolerably clear.
It is left to Colin to underscore the point. Stepping between Philomela and the missionary, he juts out his man-boy chest and feints a punch in the general direction of Miss Binny's head.

--Piss off, you fat cow!

The missionary falls back a step, sends me one last beseeching look and, seeing no softening in that quarter, calmly gathers her skirts. Her mouth forms itself around some parting benediction, but the words never come. She nods to us, once, then totters down the street.

And even as she rounds the corner, I am thinking:
Why did she want just Philomela? Why not Colin, too
?

And then, from my right, a faint clicking sound, like a nest of baby crickets. Philomela's rosary beads, rolling and diving in her palm, dancing themselves into exhaustion.