Paying Guests (28 page)

‘Church?’ Tilly said, diverted. ‘How do you mean?’

‘Got used to them we did,’ Polly said. ‘Comin’ down round where we lived and tellin’ us they could save our souls for us, and givin’ us bibles, us what couldn’t read and needed food for our bodies a sight more ‘n’ we needed bleedin’ preachin’ – an’ if we didn’t say as we was mad about God an’ all that, they didn’t show no more interest. But you’ve never once mentioned God or comin’ to church or any of that stuff, so I was wondering. Why? What are we to you, me and Georgie? We got nothin’ –’

‘Do you know,’ Tilly said slowly. ‘I really have not the least idea. It’s just that – well, there you were, in the park and when I saw you I felt so sad for you. And so bad about you. It seemed all wrong that you and your brothers should be so – should have so little that he had to run under a horse’s hooves and – well, there you are.’

‘You gave us money that day. You di’n’t ‘ave to do no more,’ Polly pointed out with an air of great reasonableness. ‘So like I says, why? All this, I mean. Givin’ me and Georgie an ‘ome.’

‘I wanted to take your brothers, too, you know, but they – well, I was told they were better off on a farm. I shall be going to visit them, though, and I shall take you and Georgie to see them too, but –’

‘See what I mean?’ Polly said. ‘Don’t make sense, do it? I knows you’re a lady an’ all that, an’ got more money and vittles than you can ever use, but all the same it ain’t the sort of usual run of things to do. To go an’ take on the likes of us, I mean – not if you’re not goin’ on about church an’ all that.’

‘I just don’t know why!’ Tilly said, rather put out now. She had not expected, when she set out to question Polly, to be put through quite such a catechism on her own account. ‘It is, after all, my affair, anyway. There is no reason why I should explain to you.’

‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t,’ Polly said. ‘I mean, it’s me and Georgie an’ all, ‘n’t it? It’s our lives an’ our doin’s as you’ve got yourself all mixed up in, so I reckon we got a right to know why. That’s all. I wasn’t bein’ pert, you know. I ain’t trying to misbehave to me betters. I was just
wonderin
‘.’

‘So you said,’ Tilly said a shade tartly. ‘No need to go on about it. Let us just say I chose to take an interest in you and your family and that I trust I may have your permission to go on doing so!’ And she could not help allowing a note of sarcasm to creep into her voice.

Polly smiled then, and Tilly realized with a stab of surprise that she never had before. Her teeth were broken and clearly unhealthy and her smile creased her face awkwardly, but it lit up her eyes in a way that made the child look almost pretty, and Tilly smiled back involuntarily.

‘Course you can,’ Polly said. ‘I just thought I’d ask, like. Not that I’ll ever understand the ways of the quality, I dare say. Georgie, you put that down right away!’ For Georgie had picked up his tin mug and was attempting to batter his sister with it.

‘We must find him some better plaything than that,’ Tilly said, glad to change the subject. ‘I am sure that we have some of Duff’s oddments still put away somewhere.’

‘You was asking about my pa,’ Polly said. ‘It was at Clerkenwell they put ‘im up in front of the beak, on account ’e never did no stealin’ near ‘ome. ’e thought ’e ‘ad a better chance o’ not gettin’ caught if ’e went where no one knew ‘is face, so ’e went down
‘Olborn way. But there, like I said, poor bugger couldn’t run, could ‘e?’

‘You should not use such words, Polly,’ Tilly said, needing to reprove. ‘It is not proper.’

‘Oh, lummy, if you want me to talk like you, you’ve got some fine ‘opes!’ Polly said and again produced that endearing smile. ‘What’s wrong with what I said, anyway?’

Tilly sighed. ‘Never mind. I’ll leave it to – well, never mind. Clerkenwell, you say? Well, we could enquire there and see what befell your father, if you wish me to.’

Polly looked down at Georgie. ’e don’t make no nevermind,’ she said, with a return of her old sullenness. ‘I don’t reckon ‘e’s around any more anyway. It was a dunnamany months ago now and ’e wasn’t strong anyway. They dies like flies in clink, don’t they?’

Tilly did not doubt the girl spoke from a wealth of knowledge of the sort she herself would never have, and so did not argue with her; but she decided privately that enquiries should be made. If the father was alive and could be redeemed and fetched safely from jail, perhaps he could be helped to some sort of occupation and the chance to make a home again for his children? It seemed to her that if she could arrange such a thing, it would show Mr Cumming and Silas that she was as aware as anyone of the need to deal with the causes of beggary. Loss of a father must surely lead children to beg; therefore fetch a father back and all should be well. So she told herself, and decided to speak to Silas that very evening on the issue, and now turned the conversation with Polly to Georgie; and since he was Polly’s favourite subject it was not difficult to fix her attention on it.

So for the next half hour Polly chattered about how it had been for her and her brothers when Georgie had been born, and how her stepmother had suffered, and slowly Tilly built up a picture of the life this girl had led. A life of semi-starvation with an ever-increasing brood of brothers in a couple of cold, wet rooms which were plagued by bedbugs and cockroaches, sharing a midden with the fifteen other families who lived in the same ramshackle house, and struggling day by day just to stay alive. Polly had clearly tried not
to love the baby her stepmother had produced and then left her to care for, dying within a week of his birth from loss of blood and some unspecified fever. Listening to her Tilly could see how it had been, how she had done what she had to do for Georgie because she had no choice at first, but how she had been drawn closer and closer to him.

The day she, Tilly, had first met them in the park, Polly had been at almost her lowest ebb. Her father had been gone a full year, and she had been coping somehow with food they begged and an occasional sixpence given to her, she said, ‘as a present, like’. And Tilly, knowing perfectly well that such presents were not given to girls without strings attached to them, made no effort to ask how often she got such ‘gifts’, or how she felt about them. That bright autumn morning over two months ago, Polly had been fit to die, so she told Tilly in a matter-of-fact tone that was chilling in its detachment, and had not even cared whether Georgie lived or died.

‘I think I wanted ‘im to,’ she said now, staring down at Georgie. ‘May I be forgiven, that was what I wanted, because I thought then I’d be able to die and it wouldn’t matter to no one. The bigger boys’d manage well enough, and with Georgie gone I’d be free. But then you came along.’

She lifted her chin and threw a glance at Tilly that seemed to glitter, so sharp was it. ‘And sent us up the ‘ospital, what wouldn’t ‘ave took us without that card from the gentleman, and there it is. I’m ‘ere and Georgie’s ‘ere and it’s goin’ to be all right.’ And she leaned over and hugged Georgie close suddenly and passionately, and the baby laughed and kicked and Tilly touched Polly’s shoulder and said nothing.

And then Eliza came in, in a gust of cold air from the street outside, bustling and chattering about the newest line in preserved peaches that Charlie had offered her at a ridiculous price, and how much better her own preserves were than any he would sell; and the moment of tension melted away. But it left Tilly feeling an even greater need to look further into what could be done for Polly and her brothers and if that meant enlisting Silas’s help, and therefore company again, well, so be it. And her secret voice whispered, ‘And
won’t that put Miss Sophie in a pet, then!’ But Tilly ignored that as too shameful for her even to consider, and smiled at the girl. ‘It’s all right, Polly,’ she said quietly under cover of Eliza’s chatter. ‘I will always take an interest in you. That’s a promise. You and Georgie really needn’t worry any more.’

‘DON’T YOU THINK you have done enough for the girl, Mamma?’ Duff said, and took from her the coffee cup she had just filled and delivered it punctiliously to Miss Fleetwood, who was sitting on the other side of the fireplace. ‘I can’t pretend I like the idea of your hanging about prisons and the like, even for the best of motives. Have you not enough to do without becoming the Elizabeth Fry
de nos jours
?’ And he smiled over Miss Fleetwood’s head at Sophie, who was sitting on the sofa holding a fan between her face and the flames of the fire, over which she peeped beguilingly at the company. Silas was leaning over the sofa behind her and he lifted his brows at Duff’s words.

‘To emulate Miss Fry would be no mean ambition, Duff,’ he said, and smiled at Tilly. ‘If you wish to visit there, I will gladly accompany you, both to be of assistance to you and to reassure Duff.’

‘Dear me,’ Tilly said, a little nettled. ‘I need no protection from anyone, including you, Duff! I don’t intend to wander where I should not, you know, amongst people in the prisons! Merely to visit the court at Clerkenwell and see what I can discover about Polly and Georgie’s father. There is no great effort in that.’

‘All the same, I would be most interested to accompany you if you would permit,’ Silas said. ‘I am quite determined we must do more at our Society to combat the problems of poverty in London today. The two meetings we have had on the issue were well attended, but it seems too little to me. I need some hard facts to
deliver to them so that I can ginger them up a little. They’re very –’ He sighed. ‘I should not speak so of the members of my own Society, I know, but they can seem a little too comfortable, you know. They listen but they do not
feel
–’

‘By all means,’ Tilly said. ‘If you are interested to seek facts, then of course, as long as you know that I am fully capable of dealing with Polly’s affairs without help – except perhaps from you, Mr Cumming.’ She smiled up at him, for he had joined the small group by the fire, leaving Mr Hancock happily talking to Mademoiselle Salinas for whom he was developing a decided
tendresse
. ‘Your care of them both has been excellent.’

‘Thank you, Ma’am. I must say it is amazing how that girl has dealt with that baby. I thought he was meat for the graveyard, and had no hope of life, but I saw him this afternoon, and examined him, you know, and he’s amazingly well. Still needs to grow and his teeth are in a sad state – as indeed are hers, but it is always so with these gutter children. They never have anything better. It’s like the rickets they are born with –’

‘Born with or suffer from because of their poverty, Doctor?’ Silas asked. ‘I am convinced that with proper care and feeding these children could be as well made as any of us.’

Mr Cumming looked amused. ‘I know your theories, Geddes. I have heard you propound them often enough. But I take leave to assure you that you are wrong. If the health is not in the germ, then it cannot be in the ear – that is to say, these people are of inferior stock. We must do the best we can for them but they can never be anything other than what they are – creatures of the gutter. Some – the superior sort – are able to pull themselves out and live tolerable enough lives and earn their keep, but the rest of them –’ He shook his head. ‘If you saw as many as I do at St George’s, Geddes, you would not have so rosy a vision.’

Silas opened his mouth to protest, but Sophie, clearly bored now, broke in. ‘Duff, my dear friend, shall we discuss our plans with Aunt Tilly? I am sure she will be most interested.’

Duff looked a little put out and his cheeks tightened, but Sophie smiled at him and he melted.

‘I had intended to do so later this evening,’ he said, ‘after – well.’ He laughed a shade awkwardly. ‘If the rest of you are not too bored by the talk of private plans.’

‘We are agog!’ Miss Fleetwood said promptly. ‘So tell us what they are. It all sounds very exciting.’ And she looked archly from one to the other and then at Tilly, her brows raised.

Tilly, who had felt a lurch of anxiety at Sophie’s words, but was determined not to show it, looked at Duff. ‘What plans, my dear?’

‘Well, I have received an invitation to hunt from Patrick,’ Duff said, a little gruffly.

‘Lord Paton, you know,’ Sophie said brightly and beamed beatifically at Tilly. ‘And I begged Duff to write and ask if I might be one of the party and he did, and the letter arrived this morning, did it not, Duff? I am invited! Is that not the greatest fun?’

There was a short silence as the company digested their amazement at Sophie’s breathtaking impudence; to propose herself to a lord she had never even met, and to do so as the companion of a young man? Had she no idea of the proprieties? Miss Fleetwood opened her mouth to speak, but mercifully – since it was clear she was about to say something blistering – Sophie spoke first.

‘I know perfectly well that it is quite outrageous of me to make such a suggestion or will seem so, but you see, I met the duke some time ago.’ She dimpled. ‘Such a charming man, I thought. He said then that I must come to visit him, but the opportunity never arose. And I would never wish to go alone to such a party. To have Duff as my chaperone, as it were, will be such a comfort!’