Park Lane (16 page)

It’s not much, but Bea feels as though she has been slapped and her legs lose their direction. She wants to go forward but she finds herself slowing down right by this hissing, spitting person. Flecks of the half-rotten-meat smell from his mouth are landing, she is sure, on her face. As she stops she feels a heavy hand reach out from behind her and take her arm.

‘Excuse me.’

It is a strong south London accent, one that, in the circumstances, does not make Bea relax. That’s it, she’s surrounded. The stranger behind her will ask her to hand her money over, quite rightly assuming that she must have some tucked in somewhere. Or worse, he could take her for the sort of woman who walks here alone. But that is not what he says at all. Instead he turns to the hisser, who has also stopped, and says, ‘Would you mind leaving this young lady in peace.’

Bea tries to look the hisser in the eye imploringly. Don’t go, she is trying to say, you may be rude, but you aren’t about to rob me. It is, of course, too dark for him to see anything but the rim of her hat.

‘She should be home,’ splutters the hisser, ‘asking her husband what he thinks.’

And he walks off, leaving Bea with this stranger behind her whom she can’t yet see.

‘Do you often walk alone through the park after dark?’

Bea gasps. He does think she is one of those women. How on earth is this happening to her? All she has done is hand out a few leaflets. Bea waits, dreading what he will say next, but he is telling her that she is still wearing her sash, perhaps asking for trouble. He’s been trying to catch up with her for a while, but she’s a galloper. Where is she going? Can she at least let him walk her out of the park?

Can she? Can she not? If she continues alone she may be accosted again, and she would rather have her belongings removed charmingly than roughly – if, if anything else, then she will run, properly this time. Bea slips her sash over her head, folds it and tucks it under her elbow. It can go under her coat before she reaches the house. Beside this stranger, she walks out of the park. This is, she thinks, becoming a habit and one which, though a little terrifying at stages, breaks at least half a dozen of the most serious rules she has been brought up with – satisfactorily so.

10

FOR THREE NIGHTS, SINCE MONDAY, THE LIBRARY BOOK
under Grace’s mattress has been burning a hole in her cheek. Each time she turns at night she fancies she can feel an edge, reminding her that she’s not just having a bad dream. It’s like one of those stories she reads in the newspaper – the maid who did the terrible thing, employers betrayed and hurt after such kindness … Maid’s family shamed … She thinks of her ma and da and the little ones with no money from her, and no chance of working again, let alone in an office. Even Michael, he’d hardly be able to keep his career in the law with a sister locked up, and she was only trying to help him. You half-wit, Grace. Still, how’s he to keep his career in the law with what he’s up to? Grace is no fool. She knows what
The Condition of the Working Class in England
is about, and Karl Marx is one of the books he’d wanted with it – though she’s not getting him that. She only has to glance at the newspaper to see that the ‘Marxists’ would destroy the lot of us if they could. Engels may sounds like the word ‘angels’ in comparison, but look at the subject matter for all that. It occurs to Grace that if she were caught with this book, the politics would be seen as much of a wrong as the thieving.

She could put it back, but when would she do that? She can hardly carry it down with the excuse that she’d found it somewhere and was returning it to the library. It’s at that point, being in
the library, putting it back, when she’s most likely to be caught. No, she has to get it out of the house, and to Michael now. Whenever she’s in her room she fancies she hears Mrs Wainwright’s heels clip along the passage. Grace watches the door handle, waiting for it to turn. Even about the house she’s waiting for a hand on her shoulder. What’s the matter with you, asks Mary as they dress?

It’s the china this morning, and with Joseph, too. Now they’re up in the dining room together she should be smiling, shouldn’t she? But she’s looking away because she doesn’t want him to see the wickedness written in her eyes, and because she’s not looking and can’t keep still, she walks into him and she jumps. He’s in his shirtsleeves, cleaning the china; just a shirt it is between him and her, though she’s her morning frock on, but that’s thin cotton too. She clutches the plate she is holding close to her, and she hopes, to dear God, that Joseph hasn’t dropped his dish. There’s no shattering though, just his voice and she can’t help but turn to it.

‘Grace,’ he says. Just Grace, but it’s a hundred words for all its softness and pull and she purses her lips tight to stop them trembling. He looks at her, puzzled at her face, and so she turns away again.

‘No,’ she says. ‘No, Joseph, no.’

Before he can reply, she has a stack of plates and is taking them downstairs for warming. She doesn’t look back.

The family is out for luncheon and, after their own dinner, they’ll have a break until four. Grace asks to be excused. Excused? says Mrs Wainwright. There’ll be no food later. Today that’s the last thing Grace is worried about, and at noon she hurries up the stairs to change into her black afternoon dress and white pinny so as to look right when she comes back in. She’s not hungry, and wonders whether it’s as much that she won’t be sitting opposite Joseph at dinner as the book. When she buttons up her coat, it’s awful tight, not much room for a book underneath. It’ll have to be her tapestry
handbag. Big enough it is too. Let’s hope Mrs Wainwright won’t go through it as Grace leaves. No thoughts like that, Grace Campbell, or your face’ll be as guilty as the sin this is.

She moves quickly now, knocks back down the stairs but not too fast, nor too slow; she needs to catch Michael in the ten minutes she knows he’s sent out to fetch soup and a slice. A pie for a treat, thought that’s not often enough, not with those thin cheeks.

Up Park Lane she goes, fourpence in her pocket. She’s to go five stops east from Marble Arch on the Tuppenny Tube, and it’s the size of this city that scares her. It goes on and on east with no stopping.

The air even here, by the park, makes you cough. What with the motors and buses rattling enough to fill her ears and all their smoke, it’s a wonder anybody can breathe at all. Not that the air was that clean in Carlisle. But it wasn’t like this. It’s worse the faster she walks, and she needs to be quick to catch him. She’s not sure which ten minutes he’ll have, varies every day, he says. The sooner she’s there, waiting outside, the better. She checks off the mansions one by one as she walks along. She doesn’t know them well yet. When she’s out on a Sunday she’s either rushing to church, or rushing back from seeing Michael. And she’s hardly going to suggest to him that they take a look along the road. He has her address but she doesn’t want him poking around, does she? Besides, he’s told her he can’t stand the people who live in places like these. Except me, she tells herself.

The houses are nearly all stone, but let darken to grey and brown. You’d’ve thought they’ve the money to clean them, the people who live here. But it seems the richer you are, the older your things look. The windows, too, look funny, all different, they are. Some have deep bays jutting out as if they’re desperate for more space but if they wanted the rooms bigger, thinks Grace, why didn’t they build square out to the front like Number Thirty-Five. It hasn’t got the prettiest windows, though. Proud as she is, Grace is still honest about that. If she were to choose, she’d take windows with a triangle hat, but no raised stone borders down the side.
That’s too much of a frill for her. Number Thirty-Five Park Lane does have grooves, pointed-edge dips between the blocks of stone for giant fingers to run through, but she doesn’t mind them there.

The shutters on one of the houses are closed like nobody ever goes there. At dinner the other day the upper servants were talking about houses not visited for years at a time. Still get dusty, though. The furniture is covered in great white sheets and sits around the rooms like ghost beasts. ‘That’s what happened here,’ James told her, ‘when they all suddenly disappeared to Lady Masters’ family’s house in America for a year. Had to, they did, after Sir William Masters’ gambling the house away and Lady Masters having to buy it back – for herself. She wasn’t going to let him gamble it away again. And what with Sir William’s dancing girl, and all that he’d given her, not to mention being so open about it and everyone knowing, well, the whole family needed to take themselves out of society for a bit. That’s what people like the Masters do. If they stayed away for a year, everyone would be talking about something else by the time they returned. And so that’s how it was – Number Thirty-Five full of life one week, with not a murmur of anything different, then like the grave the next.’

Am-er-ic-a, thinks Grace, savouring each syllable. Stories she’s heard, that you can go from any street here and do well for yourself in America. Not a question of anyone being bothered about where you’ve come from, and a maid only being a maid; over there, they care more about what you can do. And the country stretches further than you can imagine, she’s heard. Maybe she and Michael should go to America, and send back money from there. Go to America, though, and they might never see Ma, Da and the little ones, again. Not that she knows when she’ll get herself back to Carlisle.

By the time Grace reaches the top of Park Lane she’s becoming used to the noise and the road being so full of buses and motors, horses and carts picking their way between them. But it still feels as though all that engine dirt is layering itself on her. It’s a funny
thing, that the smartest place to live has so much of it. When she first arrived in the city she would have preferred a quiet street. She’s not so sure now, the busy-ness makes her feel less lonely. And you get used to a bit of green all too quick.

At this end of Park Lane the houses are smaller, tall, thin and jammed together in a row of white plaster. Still, they’re mansions themselves. On the other side of the road, in the top corner of the park, she sees a handful of men standing up on crates. Some even have crowds around them, so you can’t see the crates and they just look like giants. She’s at the end now, at Marble Arch, with steps down into the ground, and the Tube underneath.

She feared it’d be crowded. Grace has heard about the early mornings and late afternoons. Don’t travel on it then, she was told in the boarding house, or you’ll find yourself jammed in, breathing shoulderfuls of damp tweed. Then you feel the hands around your rear, though one girl claimed to have had hands around the front. But they don’t dare touch your chest. You might see who it is, though there’s not much you could do about it: you can’t move, can’t move an inch. Swivel your head and you’ll lose an eye to the rim of a short man’s bowler. So eyes forward and try to keep your mind off the fact that one of the men near you, his body squeezed against yours, is touching you there. The girls who aren’t used to it go bright red. Take the omnibus, it may be slower, but it’s safer, costs less, too. Grace took the omnibus when she was out searching for work up the city, down the city, right across London. Her world is much smaller now, she can walk to church, to the park. Today, though, she needs to be quick. She walks up to the ticket booth, hands over tuppence and in a minute she’s underneath the city and in spitting distance, she must be, of all that rot that sinks down here. She can smell it, she’s sure of it, for the same people built the Underground as built the sewers, including the first Mr Masters, Miss Beatrice’s great-grandad. Funny to know so much about him, but then you can’t miss it, not in that room at the back.

There’s no air down here. How can there be? Yet she’s still breathing, and that’s not natural, is it? Nor is the speed at which the train is going along. She’s counting the stops but she can’t see much from the middle of this crowd, and who’s to tell if they’ve been right through one she didn’t see at all. What if she went to the end of the line and there wasn’t a way out from there. But here it is, Chancery Lane, just like Michael said. The paper’s in her pocket but she can remember his voice: ‘Just at the bottom of Chancery Lane and in through one of the gateways. Then ask for this address. If you ever need me, that’s where I am.’

Back outside it’s drizzling a little; however, it’s daylight again and any daylight will do but, my word, Chancery Hill they should call it, and she’s at the top of it. Even the horses are leaning back as their hooves tilt forwards and the pavement’s not much more than a couple of feet wide so you’re knocked into the traffic. She has to hurry, even though her boots are skidding this way and that. It’s a quarter to one and surely they’ll send him out not much later. She makes her steps small, pushing down heavily to keep steady.

It’s a passage, Michael said, at the bottom, through an arch, and Grace is looking. One looms on her left. Middle Temple Lane. Middle, was that it? No, no, that’s not it. And she walks along. Outer Temple Lane, that’s the next, yes, that was it, Outer. She walks down the high-walled alley barely wide enough for a wheelbarrow, wondering where her brother does work, whether it’s a good place, after all those questions he had for her. But it doesn’t smell, she’ll give him that; and it’s deathly quiet. Grace pauses, balancing on the cobbles, and closes her eyes. You want to drink it in, this sound, or not-sound, keep it in your head for when you’re trying to sleep.

It’s the ring of footsteps that opens her eyes. A pair of men dressed in wigs and with cloaks floating behind them are coming up the lane towards her like a pair of ghosts. Grace wonders what world it is that she has stepped into but on she goes, down another slope, through the archway at the end and into a silent square.
She’s the only one in it, brick blocks with white-painted window frames rising around her, lists of names beside the doorways. A motor squeezes down a lane on the far side of the square. Grace walks towards it. Where there’s a way to drive there’s a way to walk. There’ll be someone to ask.