The Shifting Tide (5 page)

She believed that Rathbone could find that same joy with Margaret. And deep as her friendship with him still was, being a woman, she felt most sensitively for Margaret, and read her with an ease she would never have betrayed.

“But the moment they knew that it was for a clinic for street women here,” Margaret went on, “they balked at it.” She bit her lip. “They make me so angry! I stand there feeling like a fool because I’m full of hope that this time they’ll give something. I know it shows in my face, and I can’t help it. I’m trying to be polite, and inside I am veering wildly from pleading with them, thanking them overmuch as if I were a beggar and the money were for me, and fury if they refuse me.”

She did not add that she had been acutely conscious of Rathbone beside her, and what he would think of her manners, her decorum, her suitability to be his wife. But on the other hand, would he lose all respect for her, and she for herself, were she to do less than her best for a cause she believed in so passionately?

“And they say
no
?” Hester said gently, although something of her own anger crept into her tone. Cowardice and hypocrisy were the two vices she hated the most, perhaps because they seemed to give rise to so many others, especially cruelty. They were woven into each other. She had learned how many men used the street women, and she refrained from judgment on that. She also knew that quite often their wives were perfectly aware of it, even if only by deduction. What she hated was the hypocrisy of then turning and condemning those same women. Perhaps the interdependence was what frightened them, or even the knowledge that what separated them was often an accident of circumstance rather than any moral superiority.

Where there really was a moral honor, a cleanness of spirit, she had found there was also most often a compassion as well. Margaret was an example of exactly such singleness of intent.

“And then I feel so ridiculously disappointed,” Margaret answered, looking across at Hester and smiling ruefully at herself. “And I’m disgusted to be so vulnerable.” She did not mention Rathbone’s name, but Hester knew what she was thinking. Margaret caught her eye and blushed. “Am I so obvious?” she said softly.

“Only to me,” Hester answered. “Because I’ve felt just the same.” She finished the last of her tea. “But we do need more money, so please don’t stop trying. You know me well enough to imagine what a disaster I would be in your place!”

Margaret laughed in spite of herself. Seeing her amusement, it flashed across Hester’s mind to wonder if Rathbone had ever told Margaret of some of the social catastrophes Hester had precipitated in her single days when she had been newly home from the Crimean battlefields and still full of indignation at incompetence. Even then, she had burned with belief in her power to move people to change, to reform. She had wanted to sweep away vested interest and follow discovery and truth. She had spared no one with her tongue, and achieved very few of her dreams.

“I suppose so,” Margaret conceded. “I hold my tongue far more than you do. I don’t think I like that in myself. I’m thinking just the same as you are; I’m just too used to not saying it.”

“It doesn’t achieve anything,” Hester admitted. “In the end it is self-indulgent. You feel wonderful for a few minutes; then you realize what you’ve lost.”

Margaret rubbed her hand over her brow. “I hate having to swallow my beliefs and be civil to people because I need their money!”

“The women need their money,” Hester corrected her. She leaned forward impulsively and put her hand on Margaret’s. “Don’t be as frank as I was—it horrified Oliver. The fact that most of what I said was true made it worse, not better. Give him time to come to it himself. Believe me, he is a lot more liberal than he used to be.” Memory lit sharply in her mind, and she found herself almost laughing. “A year ago he would have been paralyzed with horror at the idea of what we did to Squeaky to get this place, but I honestly think he rather enjoyed it!”

A smile lit Margaret’s face, making her eyes dance. “He did, didn’t he?” she remembered.

Bessie came in, as usual without knocking, to say that there was a young woman looking for help. “Like an ’a’penny rabbit, she is,” she said wearily. “All skin an’ bone. Never make a livin’ like that! In’t ’ad a square meal in weeks, shouldn’t wonder. White as a fish’s belly an’ wheezin’ like a train.”

Hester stood up. “I’ll come,” she said simply. She glanced back once at Margaret, and saw her go to the medicine cupboard and unlock it to check what they had, and what they might afford to buy.

She followed Bessie, and found the girl standing in the waiting room shivering, but too wretched to be frightened anymore. She looked much as Bessie had described. Hester estimated her to be about sixteen.

Hester asked her the usual questions and studied her as she answered. She was slightly feverish and had heavy congestion in her lungs, but her principal problems were exhaustion and hunger, and now also cold. Her thin dress and jacket were useless against the late October rain, not to mention the freezing fog which would shortly come up from the river. If only they had money to give her a hot bath and decent clothes! But the little there was, was already in jeopardy. Hester dearly wanted Margaret to marry Rathbone, but if she did then she might no longer be able to work at the clinic. At best her time would be restricted. As Lady Rathbone, she could hardly spend as many hours there as she did now. She would have social obligations, and of course pleasures she had certainly earned. Rathbone had more than sufficient financial means to give her all she could wish of position and comfort, not like Monk, who understood both hardship and work only too intimately.

And then why should she not have children? That would end her connection with the clinic altogether.

But it could not be fought against, nor would Hester have wanted to, even were it possible.

She told Bessie to put the kettle on again and use the warming pans to heat a bed for the girl. She could at least stay there and sleep until the bed was needed for a more serious case. A little hot water and honey would ease her chest, and a couple of slices of bread her hunger. It is hard to sleep well on an empty stomach.

“We in’t got much ’oney left,” Bessie said warningly, but she was already on her way to do it.

By the time Hester left in the late afternoon, the regular costermonger, Toddy, had called by to give her the bruised apples he could not sell and the heavier vegetables not worth his while to take all the way back home again. He had consulted her about his cough, his bunions, and the blister on his hand. She had looked at them all and assured him they were not serious. She recommended honey for his throat, and he went away happy.

Effie, as the new girl was named, was still sound asleep, but her breathing was less noisy and there was a look of deep peace on her white face. The other patients were well enough, and Margaret was renewed in her determination to hold her tongue at social events, no matter what it cost her temper or her indignation. Squeaky was still grumbling about the responsibility of balancing the books, but if there was a man in London who could do it, it was he.

Hester was pleased to arrive home, even though she was aware that Monk would probably not be there. At least he had a case to work on, rather than looking for business, hoping and failing. Although as she cleared out the grate to light a low fire, being careful from habit to use no more coal than necessary, in spite of their suddenly improved circumstances, she could not keep her thoughts from turning to the problems he would face in an area so unfamiliar to him.

She lit the fire and watched the slow flame seeking the wood sticks, then the smaller pieces of coal. But after a brief blaze, the fire was not catching. The flame had sunk to a smolder. She bent down on her hands and knees and knelt forward to blow gently at the small part that was still alive. She knew the trick of placing an open newspaper over the whole front of the fireplace, to make the chimney draw, but she had no newspaper. It was an extra expense unnecessary at the moment. Anyway, she was too busy to take much interest in the world and its troubles. There was no time to read such things.

The flames licked up again.

This was the season of year when stew was a very welcome meal, and if the big pan was left on the back of the stove, she could add vegetables to it every day, and it kept perfectly. It also meant that whatever time Monk came home, a meal was hot and waiting. This time she felt free to add a nice amount of fresh meat, and when she heard his key in the lock shortly after seven, the meal was cooked.

“Well?” she asked when they were seated at the table and the bowls were steaming in front of them.

He thought before he replied, watching her reaction. “I’ve never been so cold in my life!” he answered, then smiled widely. “At least not that I can remember . . .” Since recovering so much of his past in the recent railway case, the fact of his amnesia no longer haunted him as it had from the time of the coach crash which had caused it, a month or two before they had first met—now nearly seven years ago. It was as if the ghosts were laid, the worst known and faced, and they had been not giants but ordinary weaknesses after all, frailties that could be understood, pitied, and healed. The horror had shrunk to human proportions, into tragedy rather than wickedness. Now he could joke about it.

She smiled back. A long-borne weight was gone. “Is the river very different from the streets?” she asked.

“It feels different,” he replied, taking another mouthful and savoring the richness of it compared with their recent frugality. “Everything’s governed by the tides; all of life seems to revolve around them. Ships go upstream and downstream with the ebb and flow. Get caught at low water and you run aground, but try to pass under the bridges at high water and you break your masts. The rivermen know it to the foot.” He thought for a moment. “But the water has a beauty the streets don’t. There’s a feeling of width. The light and shadow are always changing.”

She looked at his face and saw the awe of it in him. There was something in the elements of the river which had captured him already. Again the fear touched her that he was out of his depth. Might he be too occupied in seeing what was physical to be aware of the differences in the minds of thieves and receivers, the subtleties of deceit and violence whose warnings he might not recognize because he was unfamiliar?

“You aren’t listening,” he accused her.

“I’m trying to picture it,” she said quickly, meeting his eyes again. “It doesn’t sound like the city at all. Where do you start to look for the ivory? Can you trace where people have passed when there are no tracks, no footprints?” Then she wished she had not asked, because how could he know? It was too soon.

He looked rueful. “I learned that today. I spent most of the time just walking around the docks. I’ve lived in London for at least fifteen years, but I had no idea how separate a world the docks are. Thousands of tons of cargo go through them every week, from every part of the world. It’s amazing there isn’t more lost.” He leaned a little forward over the table towards her, his food temporarily forgotten, his voice rising in urgency. “It’s the gateway to the world, in and out. Ships have to wait to unload until they can find space at one of the wharves. Sometimes it’s days, sometimes weeks after they drop anchor. There are people on the water all the time—”

“How are you going to find out who took the ivory?” she interrupted.

He took another mouthful of food. “I’m not sure that I can begin there,” he replied. “I think I’ll have to come at it the other way, find out where it went and trace back from there to who took it. I need the thief because he killed Hodge. Otherwise I wouldn’t care about him. But he sold the ivory to someone, or he will. Everything that’s stolen gets sold sooner or later, unless you can eat it, burn it, or wear it.”

“Burn it?” she said in surprise.

“Coal,” he explained with a sudden smile. “Most of the mudlarks on the banks are after coal. Some are looking for nails, of course, or anything else you could use.”

“Oh . . . yes.” She should have thought of that. She tried to imagine wading up to her knees in the winter river, bending to search for bits someone would buy. But perhaps it was no worse than walking the alleys at night in the rain, hoping to sell the use of your body for half an hour. Poverty, and the need to survive, could change your view of a lot of things. Thank heaven that if Monk did not find the ivory, at least they could turn to Callandra Daviot to help them—temporarily. That is if Monk could bear to ask her.

Perhaps Hester should go to her and ask for something for the clinic? Callandra, of all people, would understand. She had worked ceaselessly for the good of the hospital, and never shrank from asking anyone for money, time, or anything else she needed. She had shamed many a society matron into a larger gift than the woman had ever intended.

She stood up and cleared away the plates. She had a hot bread-and-butter pudding in the oven, and she brought it out and served it with considerable pride. Making it so well was a very recent achievement. She watched him eat it with pleasure, noting the amusement he strove to hide, not with great success. She caught his smile, and shrugged a little ruefully.

They were still at the table when there was a firm rap on the front door.

Monk stood up immediately, but there was surprise in his face. It was too late for anyone to call socially, and he expected no information on his case for Louvain yet. Either the caller was for Hester, to do with some emergency at Portpool Lane, or a new case for him.

Hester picked up the dirty dishes and carried them out to the kitchen. When she returned, Callandra Daviot was standing in the sitting room. Her hat was askew and her hair was as wildly untidy as usual, curling in the damp and falling out of its pins, none of which mattered in the slightest. Her eyes were bright and her cheeks flushed. She had one glove in her hand; the other one was nowhere to be seen. She was glowing with happiness.

Hester was delighted to see her. She went forward to welcome Callandra.