Theirs Was The Kingdom (103 page)

“Take a seat. Over there’s the most comfortable,” and she indicated a leather armchair, the only one in a room stuffed with furniture and bric-a-brac, a place that was obviously off limits to boarders, for it had a fusty, unused smell. A dozen or so studio portraits of relatives, framed in fumed oak, crowded the walls, and assorted ornaments, dominated by a blue and gold Staffordshire group of Victoria and Albert in Highland dress, stood on the draped mantelshelf.

“Look, I don’t want to seem inquisitive but I’m thinking I’ve a duty to a girl who pays me seven shillings a week to board a dog and never gave me the least trouble. If you know her, and you saw her come in an hour since, why didn’t you step up and say how-do-you-do?”

His experience handling diffident and evasive clerks and employees’ dependants came into play. He said, sizing her up, “I really don’t see why I shouldn’t confide in you, Mrs.…?”

“Rawson,” she said. “I’m a widow. That’s Rawson up there,” and she waved a heavily ringed hand at a pop-eyed man in a Derby hat standing half-sideways and glaring down at them, his hand on a plaster pedestal in a manner that implied he had just discovered the North Pole and was proud of it.

“Miss Rycroft… Mostyn and I were engaged to be married until the spring of last year. We quarrelled and she ran away when I broke it off. I don’t think even her father knows where she is or what she’s doing. I haven’t set eyes on her since. Nobody has, and naturally I feel responsible.”

She said, her eyes meeting his with bafflement but intense curiosity. “That card you gave me. Is the gaffer o’ that great concern a relation of yours?”

“My father. I work for him.”

“
Your father!
Good grief!”

“Why should you be so surprised, Mrs. Rawson?”

“Why shouldn’t I? That lass works as a pay-desk clerk at Birley and Cookson’s, the drapers. My guess is she gets under fifteen shillings a week, plus board. Why is she at a place like that if she’s the kind of girl who hobnobbed with young gentlemen of your standing?”

“Romayne works in a draper’s?”

“Aye, and a sorry place it is from all I’m told. None o’ those living-in cribs are what you’d call home from home, but yon Birley’s a real slavedriver, for all his chapel-going.
I
wouldn’t work there, not unless I had to, I can tell you that, Mr. Swann. It’s no business of mine, of course, but if there are no hard feelings, and you were once that friendly, get her a place where she can live out and feed up. Slops, Birley feeds ’em, and she’s proof of it. She’s not so bonnie as when she first came here.”

“When was that, Mrs. Rawson?”

“Getting on for a year now. Early autumn of last year. She showed up with a chit from Mrs. Corbie—she’s next door but one, and shuts between seasons. Wanted somewhere to leave that dog and offered me a shilling a day, if you please. I thought it was daft and I still do, with her earning next to nothing, but she’s attached to the old rascal and I know how it is. I had my cat Sam fifteen years before he got run over by the watercart. I never cared to get another after that.”

“But when does she ever see the dog, Mrs. Rawson?”

“When? Twice a week. On her half-day, which is today, Thursday. After three-thirty, that is. Trust that skinflint to hold ’em to the minimum. And Sundays, after chapel, same as I said. All Birley’s girls have to attend his chapel or they’re turned off, make no mistake.”

“Has she ever talked to you, told you about herself?”

“Precious little. She’s a strange lass. Offered her many a feed, I have, but when she’s accepted she’s only pecked at it. Never seen her smile either. Not that she’s got much to smile about down at Birley and Cookson’s.” She hesitated again. “I don’t know as I should be telling you all this. She’s never let on, as we say up here, and keeps herself to herself. She did tell me she had a hard time getting a billet, having no experience or character, but she’s ladylike and that’ll be why Birley took her. He’s got a good class of trade, you see, so it pays him to be particular!”

His mind juggled clumsily with the factors in the woman’s story as Mrs. Rawson ran on, outwardly with a show of reluctance but inwardly with a relish that was rooted, no doubt, in her burning curiosity concerning someone who would pay half her weekly wage to board a dog she saw twice a week. On the face of it the situation seemed monstrous, a girl with a millionaire father hiring herself out to a tight-fisted bully for fifteen shillings a week, and submitting to all the humiliations that attended servitude at any of these establishments. His mind returned to that tongue-lashing he had given her in the cab, the last evening they spent together. She had admitted then to knowing nothing of the conditions under which most people were required to work and had seemed, on reflection, quite shocked by his brutal summary. There would be difficulties getting a situation without a trade and without references, but she could have managed better than this, even if she was determined not to apply to her father. She could have been a governess or a companion, and the sale of her jewellery and clothes would have kept her in comfort for a long time. There was something here that he did not understand, and he had an uncomfortable certainty that it related, in some way, to him and to her father’s wealth. He said, suddenly, “Look here, Mrs. Rawson, I think she’s doing this out of pique. I mean to talk her round and send her back home. If I succeed could she stop here overnight? I’d gladly pay you a sovereign.”

“A sovereign? Nay, lad, there’s no call to do that, for she’ll have to bed down on cushions in here.” She smiled a tired but knowing smile. “Aye, if I can help out I will. You’ve come looking for her, haven’t you?”

“I’ve been looking for her for sixteen months, Mrs. Rawson. Although I don’t think I was really aware of it until today. Since it’s her half-day where would I likely find her?”

“I can tell you that. At her quarters, for where else could she go on her money? It’s a big place, five minutes from the tram terminus. You can’t miss it. The staff entrance is at the side. A good view of the gasworks, she told me once. But even then she said it with a straight face.”

He thanked her and left. The heat was beginning to go from the day but the air was stale and full of dust, rising from the baking pavements like vapour over a marsh. He found the place easily enough and went down a cul-de-sac between high brick walls. A door marked “Employees only—private” stood ajar, and he passed through to find himself at the foot of an iron staircase, giving access to narrow corridors. It reminded him uncomfortably of a prison he had visited at Knutsford recently whilst seeking information from a former employee. Even on an evening such as this there was a bleakness about the place, and it struck him that it must be a cheerless lodging in winter. A persistent sound came from a room on the ground-floor, the soft, uncertain plucking of a banjo, played by an earnest amateur. The banjoist was trying to play the air of “Allan Water” and the melancholy song seemed to Giles a perfect accompaniment for the setting. He knocked and the music stopped at once. Hesitant steps approached the door that opened a few inches and a youth about nineteen stared at him through the chink.

“Yes, sir?”

The young man, whoever he was, seemed scared, as though anticipating a rebuke connected with his banjo-playing, or possibly on account of his appearance. His grubby shirt was open at the neck and his soiled cuffs were attached to shortened sleeves by threads of elastic.

“I’m looking for a young lady who works here, a Miss Mostyn. I wondered if you could show me her room?”

The young man now looked quite terrified. “Her
room
? You… you mean to
visit
her? To go up to the girls’ dormitory? You couldn’t possibly do that, sir. She’d be sacked on the spot and so would I for not reporting you to Mrs. Pedlar.”

“Who’s Mrs. Pedlar?”

“The housekeeper, sir. Young ladies’ followers aren’t even allowed in the shop, much less inside the crib.”

“Where could I find this Mrs. Pedlar?”

“You can’t, she’s out.”

“Well, then, since she’s out I’ll give you half-a-crown to tell me how I can get a word with Miss Mostyn. You can come along with me if you’re not prepared to take me on trust.”

The youth washed his hands. Giles had seen this gesture performed by male assistants in shops of every kind and it had always struck him as rather comic. It did not seem comic now but abject and pitiful. He said, taking a coin from his pocket, “You don’t have to tell me anything. Just nod, or shake your head. Is it one floor above here?”

The youth shook his head.

“Two?”

The youth nodded.

“Left or right at the stairhead?”

The youth lifted his left shoulder an inch, and then, pocketing the coin, whipped back into his room and slammed the door.

Giles went up two flights of iron stairs to a long corridor that ran left and right from an uncurtained window. Through the dust-coated glass he could see the gasometer, silhouetted against an orange sky. The place seemed empty and silent. Only one door, also ajar, broke the long expanse of the facing wall to the left and he approached it, pausing on the threshold and peering through the crack into an austere high-ceilinged dormitory, containing about a dozen beds, each fitted with a deal locker. Despite the brilliant sunset outside, the light was bad up here and already the big room was in half-shadow. There were two sash windows, each half-obscured by cheap, dun-coloured curtains. A strip of coconut matting ran between the iron cots but the floor spaces were bare boards. On top of each locker was a case or grip of one kind or another, and at the far end was a fixed plank, supporting a row of washbasins and ewers.

He did not see her at once. She was sitting by the furthermost window, looking out over a wide expanse of roofs that lay between the butt end of the building and the great, grey gasometer that brooded over this part of the town. There was a book open on her lap but she was not reading. Instead there was a kind of listless repose about the way she held herself, as though the preceding hours had drained the dregs of her energy and expectations. He had a conviction that if the landscape below had erupted like Pompeii she would have continued to sit there, watching and waiting, with no wish to do more than witness the catastrophe. Her demeanour indicated nothing beyond mute acceptance, as though she had come to terms with every probability, including the Apocalypse.

It cost him a great effort to intrude upon her thoughts, whatever they were. More than a minute passed before he could nerve himself to advance into the room when the sound of his footfall on the boards caused her to turn her head. He saw her stiffen, saw her blink half a dozen times, then raise one hand and pass it slowly across her brow, as though she found it impossible to believe what her senses recorded.

He said, hoarsely, “It’s all right, Romayne… it’s me… Giles. I’ve come for you. Come on home, dearest,” but she continued to hold herself rigid and stare fixedly at him, just as though he had been a ghost.

He crossed to her then and took her hand, finding it cold and unresponsive. He said, “It isn’t a miracle, and I didn’t hunt you down. It was pure coincidence. I was up here on business and saw Prune and then you. I watched you go into Mrs. Rawson’s. I don’t know what you’re doing here, but whatever it is it’s over. I won’t have you living like this, in this awful place…”

But then, at last, she spoke, speaking his name in a low voice and with a note of query.

“Giles?”

He was sorry he had been so impulsive. It would have been wiser, perhaps, to have written and asked her to meet him somewhere. Or demand some explanation from her employers as to what she was doing here and what, if anything, she had told them about her identity. The shock of stealing up on her in that way seemed to have stunned her. She let the book fall and he stooped to pick it up, noting that it was a paper-backed edition of Tennyson’s
Idylls of the King.
It told him something, not much, but enough to see her presence here as a kind of penance, lifting the corner of a curtain on one of the root causes of their incompatibility, for he had often nagged her to read verses that he himself loved. He saw, however, that she was in no kind of state for an involved discussion of any kind and said, authoritatively, “Get your things together. You’re getting out of here. Tonight.
Now.”

She stood uncertainly. “That isn’t possible… Mr. Birley…”

“Damn Birley. You don’t owe Birley a wave of the hand. I’ve heard all about him and his kind and I’m not leaving you here. Get your things.”

“There’s Mrs. Pedlar, the housekeeper… If I’m missing they’ll notify the police… One of the girls ran off and there was a great commotion…”

“I’ll pay Mrs. Pedlar the compliment of telling her where you’ve gone and why. Is this your locker and bag?”

She nodded and he swung the grip down and opened the locker. There was very little inside. A shop dress, a pair of shoes worn through the soles, a pair of black woollen stockings, some clean underclothes, and a workbox with its hinges broken. As he stuffed the box into the bag its lid fell off and he caught a glimpse of a bundle of his own letters, together with some sixpenny editions of anthologies.

She seemed incapable of making the smallest decision but stood by, neither helping nor hindering him. But when he snapped the bag shut she said, looking along the row of empty beds, “I would have liked to have said goodbye. They were wonderful people, Giles.” Somehow the remark told him more about her pilgrimage than anything he had learned so far. He kissed her, saying, “You can write to them. As soon as we’re married.”