Silence in Hanover Close (37 page)

The writing was shaky and a little crooked on the page, and Charlotte was struck with cold shock as she realized that Aunt Vespasia was old and frailty was catching up with her.

She stood in the kitchen in the early morning holding the blue deckled paper in her hand. It seemed as if all the good and certain things in the world were fading fast; there was a chill so close to the skin no fires could dispel it.

She went to visit Pitt again, waiting in the shivering rain with other quiet, sad-faced women whose fathers, husbands, or sons rotted away in the Steel. Some were violent, some greedy, brutal by nature of circumstance, many merely inadequate to cope with life in the struggling, overcrowded streets where only the strongest endure.

Charlotte had time for pity, time to wonder and think about these other women—it was easier to ache for another’s pain than work through the realities of her own. That made it easier to face Pitt and lie, smiling as if she had confidence and smothering her fear if she occupied the storm of emotion inside herself with something else.

When at last she was permitted in she was not allowed to touch him, only to sit across the table and stare into his face, seeing the dirt and the bruises, the hollows round his eyes where shock could not be hidden by his forced smile. Never in her life had she had to live so difficult or so complete a lie. He knew her so well, she had never succeeded in deceiving him before. Now she met his eyes and lied as easily as if he had been a child instead of a man, someone to be protected and comforted with stories while she bore the truth.

“Yes, we are all perfectly well,” she said quickly. “Although of course we miss you terribly! But we have enough of everything, so I haven’t had to ask Mama or Emily for any help, although I’m sure they’ll give it if it should be necessary. No, I haven’t been back to the Yorks’. I’m leaving it to Mr. Ballarat, as you said. . . . Well, if he hasn’t sent anyone to see you yet it must be because he doesn’t need to.” She kept mastery of the conversation, permitting no time for interruptions, questions she could not answer.

“Where’s Emily? At home. They wouldn’t let her in here, she isn’t family—at least, not close enough. Sisters-in-law don’t count. Yes, Jack Radley is being very helpful. . . .”

Emily was in the laundry room doing the job she disliked most intensely: ironing the starched frills of cotton aprons, half a dozen of them. Somehow Edith had taken advantage of some absence of mind to maneuver Emily into doing her share as well. She looked up in surprise when Mary came to the door, glanced all round her, then slipped in and closed it, fingers to her lips.

“What is it?” Emily whispered.

“A man!” Mary said urgently, her voice so low her words were almost swallowed. “You got a follower!”

“I haven’t!” Emily denied fiercely. She certainly did not need that kind of trouble. And it was totally unjust; she had encouraged no one. In fact, she had given the butcher’s boy a flea in his ear when he had smiled at her, impudent creature.

“Yes you ’ave!” Mary insisted. “Scruffy, ’e is, an’ looks like ’e just bin up a chimney! But spoke awful nice an’ polite, an’ if’n ’e were washed ’e could be real nice, I reckon.”

“Well, I don’t know him!” Emily said fiercely. “Tell him to go away!”

“Won’t you even come and see—”

“No! Do you want me to lose my character?”

“ ’E’s awful keen.”

“I’ll be thrown out!” Emily exploded.

“But ’e says ’e knows you!” Mary tried once more. “C’mon, Amelia; ’e could be—Well, d’you want to stay a lady’s maid all your life?”

“It’s a lot better than being out on the street without a character!” Emily hissed back.

“Well, if you’re really sure. ’Is name is Jack suffink.”

Emily froze. “What?”

“ ’Is name is Jack suffink,” Mary repeated.

Emily dropped the iron. “I’ll come! Where is he? Has anyone else seen him?”

“You changed yer mind pretty quick!” Mary said with profound satisfaction. “But yer’d better be sharp! If Cook catches yer, yer’ll be in dead trouble. ’E’s at the scullery door. On wiv yer! ’Urry!”

Emily ran from the laundry room along the corridor, through the kitchen and scullery to the back door, with Mary close behind her, keeping watch for cook’s return.

Emily could hardly believe what she saw. The man standing in the rain on the back steps beside the coke scuttles and rubbish cans was dressed in a dark, ragged coat that came past his knees, and his face was all but hidden by a broad-brimmed hat and a lock of sooty hair that fell over his brow. His skin seemed grimy, as if he had indeed come down a chimney.

“Jack?” Emily said incredulously.

He grinned, showing startlingly white teeth in his filthy face. She was so glad to see him she wanted to laugh, but realized immediately her laughter would turn to tears. It all rushed through her in a torrent so fierce she said nothing at all.

“Are you all right?” he demanded. “You look dreadful!”

Then she did start to laugh, a little hysterically, but stopped herself when she realized Mary could hear her. She controlled her voice with an effort. “Yes, I’m fine. I put a chair under my door at night. But I need to talk to you. How is Charlotte?”

“It’s very hard on her, and we’re not getting anywhere.”

There was a shout inside the scullery and Emily knew someone was back who would betray her, if not Cook then Nora.

“Go!” she said quickly. “I’ll go to the cobbler’s in half an hour or so—wait for the round the corner. Please!”

He nodded, and by the time Nora’s curious face came round the outer door he had slipped up the area steps and disappeared.

“What are you doing out ’ere?” Nora said sharply. “I thought I ’eard you talking to someone!”

“Well, you know what ‘thought’ did!” Emily snapped back, then regretted it; not that she had any compunction about Nora, it was just unwise to antagonize her. But it was too late to retreat now, or it would only make her suspicious. “For that matter, what are you doing out here?”

“Er ...” Nora had obviously come to catch Emily out, and now she was confused. She lifted her chin a little higher. “I thought if there was someone ’ere ’e might be bothering you! I came to ’elp!”

“How kind of you,” Emily replied sarcastically. “As you see, there is no one. I came to see how cold it is. I’m going on an errand; I shall need a greatcoat.”

“Of course you will!” Nora said waspishly. “What else do you expect in January?”

“Rain,” Emily replied with growing confidence.

“It is raining! Couldn’t you see that through the window?”

“Not much. I was in the laundry.” She stared at Nora’s handsome bold eyes, daring her to make an open accusation.

“Very well then.” Nora shrugged elaborately; she had elegant shoulders and she knew it. “Then you’d better be on your way, and don’t take ’alf the afternoon about it!”

Emily went back to the laundry room to finish the last apron. She folded it and put away the flatiron, then collected her hat and coat, and after telling Mary where she was going, she set out up the area steps and along Hanover Close towards the main thoroughfare, waiting with every footstep to see Jack, or hear him behind her.

She nearly bumped into him round the first corner. He still looked a sight, and he did not touch her but walked respectfully beside her as if they were both exactly what they appeared: a lady’s maid on an errand and a sweep’s man taking a short time off.

As they walked she told him about the extraordinary conversation she had overheard between Veronica and Loretta, and the only conclusion possible from her discussion with the tweeny.

He in turn told her what little news he had of Charlotte.

By the time that was completed she had Veronica’s boots and was on the way back to Hanover Close. It was raining harder, her feet and her skirts were wet, and the soot was beginning to run in black trickles down his face.

“You look fearful!” she said with a rather painful smile. She was walking less and less quickly. She was dreading going back into the house, not only because this was a moment’s freedom from duty and fear, but, surprisingly sharply, because she would miss Jack. “Your own mother wouldn’t know you!” she added.

He started to laugh, at first very quietly, then more heartily as he gazed at her straight, mud brown coat, her plain hat and sodden boots.

She began to giggle as well, and they stood in the street together streaming wet, laughing on the edge of tears. He put out both his hands and took hers, holding her gently.

For an instant she thought it was on the edge of his tongue to ask her to marry him, but whatever words he had were quickly swallowed back. She had all the Ashworth money, the houses, the position; he had nothing. Love was not enough to offer.

“Jack,” she said without giving herself time to weigh or judge. “Jack—would you consider marrying the?”

The rain was washing the soot off his face in black drops.

“Yes please, Emily. I would like to marry you—very much.”

“Then you may kiss me,” she said with a shy smile.

Slowly, carefully, and very gently he did; and standing there, filthy and cold in the rain, it was exquisitely sweet.

P
RISON LIFE WAS UNLIKE
anything Pitt had imagined.

At first the sheer shock of his arrest, of being suddenly and violently thrust from one side of the law to the other, had numbed his feelings, robbing him of all but the most superficial reactions. Even when he was taken from the local cells to the great prison at Coldbath Fields, the reality of it was purely sensory. He saw the massive walls and heard the door shut, metal clanging on stone, and the strange sour smell assaulted him, catching in his throat. He could taste it on his tongue, but still it did not touch his emotions.

When he woke the following morning, stiff, muscles tight with cold, memory flooded back, and it all seemed preposterous. Any minute someone would come, full of apologies, and he would be taken out and given a good breakfast, hot, probably porridge and bacon, and lots of steaming tea.

But when someone did come it was only the regular jailer with a tin dish of gruel, ordering Pitt to get to his feet and get ready for the day. Pitt protested without thinking, and was told curtly to obey orders or he would find himself at the crank.

The other prisoners regarded him with curiosity and hatred. He was the enemy. Were it not for the police, none of them would be here in this prolonged torture, cramped in the narrow, airless cells of the treadmill, endlessly stepping on slats that gave way under them as they struggled to keep abreast in the slow-turning wheel. Fifteen minutes in one of its cooplike stalls with the hot air suffocating the lungs was all any man could bear; then he had to be taken out before he collapsed.

If one were not eager enough at this, there was punishment ever available. For outright rebellion a man could be birched or flogged; for lesser offenses such as insolence or refusal to obey orders a man could be required to do shot drill. It was the third day before Pitt found himself ordered to this, for answering back, laziness, and causing a brawl.

The men were lined up in a hollow square outside in the bitterly cold exercise yard. Each man stood three yards from his neighbor and was given a twenty-five-pound iron cannonball to place at his feet. At the command he must pick it up and carry it to his neighbor’s spot, put it on the ground, and return to his own spot, where he would find a new ball put there by the man on his other side. This senseless passing round and round of shot could be kept up for seventy-five minutes, till shoulders stabbed with pain, and muscles were torn and backs too sore to straighten.

Pitt’s offense had been a stupid quarrel picked by another prisoner, who felt compelled to swagger in front of his companions. Had Pitt been paying more attention to his surroundings he would have noticed the man’s brittle temper, the slight bounce to his walk, his curled fingers. Pitt would have understood the glitter as the man’s eyes moved from side to side to see who was watching him, and whether admiration was there, the peculiar mixture of fear and respect that the weak have for violence. He would have recognized the man’s sharp grin as that of the bully on parade.

But his mind was on the brothel and Cerise’s dead body thrown carelessly on the gaudy bed, as he tried to recall the few moments when he had seen her face. Had she really once been so beautiful, or possessed of such charm and wit, that Robert York had been bewitched by her into betraying his country? He would have been risking not merely the love of his wife, which he might or might not value, but his position in the Foreign Office and in Society, the things which governed the whole style of his life. If he had been caught, the best he could have hoped for would have been a cover-up, for his family’s sake, and to prevent a scandal, which the government would not want; at worst he would have been brought here, where Pitt was, Coldbath Fields, or somewhere like it, to await trial, and very probably the hangman’s noose.

That reminder was enough to overwhelm him with such anger and fear Pitt was careless of the immediate danger. He did not see the momentary swagger, the quick glitter in the man’s eyes, nor recognize the challenge. The man was marking his territory. When the man spoke, Pitt replied tartly with the first answer that came to his tongue, and before he realized it he had placed the bully in a position of having to defend himself to keep from losing face. It was stupid, an idiotic scuffle that ended with both of them on shot drill and Pitt bending, straightening, carrying the shot, replacing it, walking back, until he thought his back was broken and the sweat drenched his clothes. When it finally stopped, they stuck to him in clammy cold and the ache of tortured muscles was so sharp that for four days he could not move even in his sleep without pain.

Days went by, and Pitt became accustomed to the routine, the wretched food, always being cold except when labor made him sweat and then the worse chill afterwards. He hated always being dirty, he loathed the lack of any privacy even for essential functions. He was lonelier than he had ever been in his life; and yet never alone. Actual physical solitude would have been a blessing, a chance to relax the tension, the awareness of enmity, and to explore the thoughts crowding inside himself without prying, cruel eyes watching, probing for weakness, prurient to invade.