Shadows Fall Away (2 page)

I ran my index finger around the edge of the stiff shirt collar. “I’d rather be wearing my jeans and Chucks. This collar is killing me. Hell, even the slippers and crazy knickers thing your friend wore today looked more comfortable.”

Agatha smiled. “Percy does seem to have an Oscar Wilde fetish these days. I’m told he even dresses like that between conferences.”

Agatha maneuvered us to the left where I saw our destination. One minute, we were surrounded by the tall buildings of a very modern London, then, suddenly we were in an oasis of green.

“So,” Agatha said, ignoring the lowering clouds and the obvious threat of rain as she set a strolling pace beside the boating lake. “Tell me about this ancestor of your father’s. I believe your mother mentioned an incorrigible nephew—not unlike yourself—M.J., was it?”

“Dad’s great-grandmother and her husband went to America in 1882. Mary’s sister, Ann, went along with them and married an American. Ann’s oldest son, M.J., left home when he was fifteen and traveled wherever the wind blew. Which sounds like a nice life to me.”

“You’re an intelligent young man—”

This crap again. Great. “Well, I’m not my ever perfect cousin Ricky, I’m not graduating high school or college early, and not going to law school and be prefect at that, too.”

Agatha frowned but at least she didn’t whack me with that damn fan.

I changed the subject. “I remember one part of the diary my mom read aloud. It was said M.J. was ‘consorting with women of ill-repute.’” I looked around and grinned. “You think I can find any of those tonight?”

“Incorrigible!”

Even though Agatha did her best to be shocked, I saw that little gleam in her eye.

A patrolling cop paused, blocking our path. “Evening.” He tipped his hat. “You folks have a good evening, and keep an eye on the weather. It’s going to rain soon.”

“Oh, pish!” Agatha replied. “It wouldn’t dare!”

We’d gotten less than fifty yards further when the first fat droplets fell.

Agatha glared up at the sky. The rain fell harder.

I pried her fingers from my bicep and grabbed her wrist. “Let’s go.” The last thing I needed was for her to slip on a wet walkway and break a hip. I tried to hurry her toward the exit. The large drops pelted us. “I hope there’s a cab outside those gates.”

“Oh, it’s just a little rain. If I were some young blond you’d be dilly-dallying wanting to see my clothing wet and plastered to me.”

“Well, you’re not and—”

The rest of my comment was drowned out by a clap of thunder and flash of lightning. The next thunderclap echoed, vibrating the foliage around us. I picked up the pace to the park exit.

“Will you slow down?” Agatha shouted.

“Hell no, not with all these trees around.” A shiver ran down my spine. I flashed back to the third grade and the day a player on the opposing Little League team got zapped during a sudden downpour.

The other kid had been less than twenty feet away when it happened and to this day I could swear the electricity skimmed the top of my head and gave a little jolt to my brain. I could have been the one killed.

The drops fell harder; I began to jog. Within seconds, Agatha hit me with her fan again. “I lost my shoe!”

With a muttered obscenity, I let go of her arm and turned back to the retrieve the damn thing.

Thunder rumbled behind me and the hair on the back of my neck rose with static electricity. Just like it had that day at the baseball game.

A lightning bolt sliced through the dark sky.

An invisible bomb shook the ground.

My world went black.

***

A thousand bees buzzed in my ears. My head filled with the rhythmic pounding on the inside of my skull like a sledgehammer against concrete. My wet clothes dragged at me, weighed me down, and held me on my back. I gasped for air, hoping to hell the rain didn’t drown me. Frozen, all I could do was experience the moment, feel the hard wet ground beneath me, hear the explosive booms, sense flashes of brightness beyond my closed eyelids.

Someone slid their arm under me, tried to tug me up.

I opened my eyes though I couldn’t see much with the darkness and onslaught of rain.

“You’ll come along peaceable like now, won’t ya lad?”

“Yeah, sure.” I let the cop in the old costume help me up. This guy must be from the party. Obviously, Aunt Agatha had gone to call 911 or whatever it was the English used.

Even with the guy’s help, my wobbly knees refused to cooperate and I stumbled back to the ground, pulling the cop on top of me.

“Enough!” the man cried. “We’ll have none o’ that!”

It took a minute to realize the cop was reaching for his nightstick. I tried to get up, to run, but slipped on the wet ground, fell face first.

“Here, now!” Another voice cut in, a woman’s voice. “Can’t you see the boy’s hurt? Struck by lightning he was…saw it meself! Leave off him!”

Agatha? I turned, wiped the splashed mud from my eyes, saw a thin face hovering near mine. I squinted trying to focus through the rain and haze that danced across my vision.

“Are you all right? Can you hear me?”

“Agatha?” I mumbled, certain my great aunt couldn’t have picked up an accent that quick and she sure wouldn’t look
that
good with a wet dress plastered to her chest.

“You lie easy, dearie,” the woman said. “Doctor Trambley’s just through there, on York Terrace. I’ll run fetch him.”

I started to ask where Agatha was but, before I could get the words out, the blackness grabbed me again.

Eugenia Trambley

I rubbed the bridge of my nose and replaced my spectacles as if preparing for battle then looked around the dining room. We appeared like any other middle-class family at dinner. Thick velvet drapes covered the windows and kept out the ceaseless patter of the rain. The gaslights cast a warm glow on the polished wood paneling and reflected off the serving dishes aligned precisely on the mirrored sideboard. The table was set with polished silver, crystal and china neatly arranged on the stiff white Damask cloth a discrete spray of flowers sat in the center. A wine carafe was placed by my father’s plate. The four of us each in the proper seat, around the table. Father and Mother at the head and foot, of course, my widowed older sister across from me. It all appeared perfectly genteel and normal.

But for the rest of it, I didn’t suppose it was all that normal.

Father’s white mutton-chop whiskers quivered with suppressed agitation and he flushed to the very top of his bald head. Mother’s mouth had drawn itself into a tight line that accentuated the deep furrows of disapproval between her snapping blue eyes. My sister Phoebe tossed her head in utter disgust, strands of too early gray springing free from the black ribbon tying back her hair. She brushed them away impatiently.

Their reactions goaded me to continue the conversation I’d started. “The point is, Father, that having too many children forces these women into poverty, and poverty forces them onto the streets. We sit here, snug and comfortable, bemoaning the horrid conditions in the East End—blaming it on everything from immigrants to social decay—when the answer is quite simple! And it’s that answer I want. How can these women avoid getting pregnant?”

Father sputtered, spraying red wine over the crisp white tablecloth in front of him.

Mother’s heavy etched water glass dropped to the table with a dull
thunk
and she sat, transfixed, staring in shock and disbelief as if I’d committed the most unpardonable of sins instead of asking a simple question.

The hiss of the gas lamps and the steady thrum the rain filled the dining room until Phoebe replied with a tone of contempt. “The method, my simple-minded sister, who should be too innocent to even know of such things, is also quite evident,” she said. “One simply…
doesn’t
. I should suspect even you would understand the mechanism that governs such things.” She paused, toying with a spear of asparagus and fixed me with an accusing look. “Or is it,” she asked coyly, “that you understand it all too well?”

I flared hotly at the innuendo but refused to rise to the bait. Instead, I took my
serviette
and blotted the spreading wine stain before shooting Phoebe a venomous glance. “Is it such a difficult question?” I persisted. “I don’t understand what you’re so upset about. I’m eighteen, I know how these things work…in theory, of course.”

A flash of lightning glared off the dark-paneled walls and mirrored sideboard followed immediately by a boom of thunder that rattled the windows. Mother jumped, eliciting yet another scowl from Phoebe.

“Oh, do go cower in the cellar if you’re going to do that every time it rains, Mother. You’re putting us all on edge.”

“Phoebe!” Father turned his anger from me to her but kept his voice low and controlled. “I’ll not have you address your mother that way. You know very well the cause of her trauma. I think you might at least show some Christian charity. She merits your admiration and respect, not your condemnation!”

Phoebe glared at Father and jabbed her fork at a piece of pork on her plate. “Well, I apologize, but it agitates me.”

I bit my tongue. It seemed Phoebe was always agitated by something.

Father patted mother’s clammy hand. “Perhaps you should lie down, my dear. I have some laudanum in my bag.”

She shook off his attempt at comfort. “I’m
fine
.” She darted a gloomy look at Phoebe who, for her part, ignored Mother entirely.

Father resumed his seat as I lifted the edge of the wet Damask cloth, to place the dishes on the bare walnut tabletop.

“Must you do that?” Phoebe asked. “We
do
have a servant.”

“Yes, we do.” I continued with my task. “But
you
sent her out in this horrid storm to fetch your precious strawberry tart.” I finished sopping up the spill, balled the soaked cloth and placed it inside the dumbwaiter before resuming my seat,

“I suppose
I
should have gone?” Phoebe complained. “And where is that silly girl? Surely it doesn’t take this long to go to the shop and back.”

It took all my willpower to hold my tongue when Mother chimed in about the help not having the sense to come in out of the rain. I did not want the conversation to veer in that direction because it would give Phoebe a platform on which to rail about the working classes and about social parasites. And I’d heard that lecture more than enough.

I turned again to Father and chose my words carefully to avoid another eruption, “I know there are ways to help these women…”

The sharp scrape of Phoebe’s knife on the plate blended with Mother’s
tsk
of disapproval.

Father’s flush deepened. His cheeks blazed in sharp contrast to his white whiskers. “Such matters are not for proper young women to think about, let alone to mention at dinner table. The subject is closed.”

My frustration boiled up. “The subject
cannot
be closed.” I moved to the head of the table beside Father. Another crack of thunder rattled the china; Mother flinched and Phoebe uttered a martyr’s sigh. Yet I persisted. I had to. “Surely, Father, you can see this as clearly as I. You know the wretched conditions. You’ve seen the results. If children survive at all, they live in filth because—”

“Because their mothers are whores,” Phoebe spat. “Really, Genie, you have the most disgusting choice in social causes.”

Father said nothing.

“It’s our moral duty, Father. It is—”

Mother interrupted, her fear vanquished momentarily by her vehemence. “You speak of morality? Their kind have no morals! They deserve everything they get!”

I gasped. “Mother!”

“Where
is
that silly girl with our dessert?” Phoebe interrupted, clearly wishing to change the subject.

The front door banged open and Mother jumped in fright. Our maid burst into the dining room. “Doctor Trambley, sir! There’s a boy lying in the park. I think ‘e’s hurt.”

“Or likely another drunkard wandered from the East End.” Phoebe sniffed. “I do wish the constabulary would keep them where they belong.”

“Beggin’ yer pardon ma’am, but he’s quality folk. I think ‘e mighta been struck by lightning. ‘Is clothes was all smoking.”

Father rose hastily. “
This
,” he said stiffly, “is our moral duty. I’ll get my bag.”

“I’ll go with you.” I turned back to the maid. “Sarah, fetch Harry from the stables. We may have need of a strong back.”

Father drew himself up to his full height and looked me straight in the eye. “You need
not
accompany us, Eugenia.”

I stared back at him. I had as much medical training as he’d allowed. I would not back down in this.

“Unless you wear an oilskin,” he conceded. “It’s filthy weather out.”

“Yes, Father.” I suppressed a smile of triumph. “As you wish.”

Phoebe’s cluck of disgust could be heard over the thunder and I didn’t care one whit.

The sky was near black, the pavement slick as we hurried on towards the park. We skirted the lightning-struck tree and approached the fallen man. “Do you think—”

I broke off as the young man on the ground stirred, turning from his side to his back. I ran forward, Father close behind. I knelt, cradled his head in my lap, and held my umbrella over his us both. He was hardly older than I was. “Can you hear me? Can you move? Can you speak?”

“He causes you any trouble,” the nearby constable said, “I’ll be close by. You just give a holler.”

“He is hardly in any condition to cause trouble.” Father’s eyes narrowed. “And if you’re not going to assist us in getting him to my surgery, you can at least let me get about my examination.”

“Agatha?” the young man called. “Where’s Agatha?”

“American,” Father said, ducking beneath the umbrella. He placed his stethoscope to the lad’s chest. “His heartbeat is strong.” He felt the young man’s limbs. “Nothing appears to be broken.” With a handkerchief, he blotted the cut on the lad’s temple. “This isn’t terribly serious. A stitch or two should mend it.”

“Agatha,” the young man called again, this time his voice stronger. He struggled to sit up despite Father’s and my protest. He held the back of his head, winced. “Is Agatha here?”