Tilly True (11 page)

Thrusting the wooden spoon into Bootle's hand, Susan's plump features crumpled into a frown. ‘Oh, Nat, you should have give me a bit of notice. But never mind, it's done now.' With her frown melting into a smile, she waddled across the floor extending her hand to Tilly. ‘We usually take in commercial gentlemen, Miss Tilly, but if you ain't too particular as to space, then I'm sure we can make you comfortable.'

‘I ain't too particular about nothing, Mrs Bootle. I'm grateful for a warm bed and a hot meal.'

‘That's settled then.' Susan clapped her hands. ‘Round the table, Bootle children. Toot sweet. You too, Miss Tilly. Make yourself at home.'

Handing back the spoon as if it were a baton in a relay race, Bootle smiled proudly at his wife as she took charge of the stew and began ladling it into small pudding basins.

‘She's a pearl,' Bootle said, swatting off children and holding out a chair for Tilly. ‘A real gem, is my Susan. Educated, too. Speaks French like a native as you just heard. I'm still puzzled why such a jewel married a man like myself.'

‘Don't talk soft, Bootle.' Chuckling and blushing, Susan handed him two pudding basins filled to overflowing with stew. ‘Serve Miss Tilly first. And you mind your manners, Bootle children.'

Sitting down at the table, Tilly did a quick head count and realised that there were only six children present, although there had seemed at least double that number when they were jumping around, tumbling over each other and shrieking.

‘This is the late six,' Bootle said, handing out bowls and casual cuffs round the head to the boys who continued to chatter. ‘A bonus, you might say.'

‘Oh, Bootle, don't tease.' Susan sat down and began hacking slices off a loaf, dealing them out to the children. ‘What Nat means is that our five eldest is out in the world now; the boys apprenticed to respectable trades and the one girl, our Ethel, in service up West.'

‘You must be very proud,' Tilly said, not knowing quite what else to say.

‘Proud? I should just say so.' Bootle puffed out his chest and beamed at the curly blond heads bent over their soup bowls. ‘Just when we thought our duty done, then the Lord saw fit to send us six more little Bootles to keep us company.'

‘To keep us poor, you mean,' Susan said, laughing. ‘Eat up, all of you, and then I can show Miss Tilly her room.'

The room turned out to be little more than a linen cupboard. The slatted shelves had all been removed except the one at the bottom and this had been turned into a makeshift bed with a flock-filled mattress and a feather pillow.

‘It's a bit on the cosy side, I grant you,' Susan said, shuffling out of the cupboard so that Tilly could just about squeeze inside. ‘But it's clean and warm. I ain't never had no complaints from the gents.'

Compared to Bert's coal cellar or a snow-covered pavement it was a palace, but Tilly couldn't help wondering how the commercial gentlemen had managed to fold themselves up small enough to get all of their bodies into a space that could not have been more than four feet in length. She would either have to curl up in a ball or have her legs sticking out of the doorway.

‘I'll fetch you some blankets then.' Susan hesitated, lowering her voice. ‘Just one thing, though. You might find the nippers a bit of a trial on Monday, Wednesday and Sunday mornings.'

‘Why so, Mrs Bootle?'

Susan blushed from the roots of her mouse-brown hair to the folds of chin that obscured her neck. ‘Mr Bootle likes his conjugals on them days, regular as clockwork. The nippers knows they must not interrupt the conjugals so they're inclined to become a bit frisky, if you know what I mean. No harm in them – they're just high-spirited. We ain't never had a young lady staying, and, in my experience, gents can sleep through anything, so I thought I'd better warn you.'

‘Thank you.' Momentarily lost for words, Tilly tried not to picture the scene of Mr and Mrs Bootle in their conjugals: two jam roly-polys bouncing about on the bed. ‘I got brothers and sisters of me own so I'm used to young 'uns and their pranks.'

After a month of living with the Bootle family, Tilly had grown used to fending off the Bootle children three mornings a week when their energetic parents enjoyed their conjugals. She had not quite managed to put names to faces, as they were so much alike as to be indistinguishable one from the other. Constantly on the move, they rarely stayed still long enough for the difference in their sizes to help with identification. There were, Tilly discovered, two girls and four boys, but as they were all very much alike and had baby blue eyes and blond curls, she soon adopted their parents' habit of referring to them as a group.

Life was not exactly comfortable in the Bootles' cramped apartment, but it was bearable, and Tilly had become accustomed to eating mutton stew six nights a week with a boiled bullock's head and turnips on a Sunday to relieve the monotony. She had grown used to getting up early each morning and going down three flights of stairs to the privy in the back yard, and breaking through a layer of ice in a bucket of water to wash her hands and face. Once a week she walked two miles to the public baths taking with her a coarse huckaback towel and a small nugget of Calvert's carbolic soap. With only the clothes that she stood up in, Tilly had to wash her cotton blouse and chemise before retiring to her cupboard, leaving them draped over a clothes horse by the fire.

Saving what was left from her wages, after paying her rent to Susan, Tilly hoarded the coins in a paper bag, tucking it under the mattress in her cupboard. When she had saved enough, she planned to buy some new clothes in Petticoat Lane and to brave a visit to Red Dragon Passage. Home was never far from her thoughts and every night in her prayers she asked God to keep an eye on Winnie, Lizzie, Jim and Dan, and to make Pops better.

Each morning when she left Pook's Buildings to make the short walk to Hay Yard, Tilly would follow Bootle, glancing nervously over her shoulder every time she heard the rumble of cartwheels and the clip-clopping of horses' hooves, fearing it might be Bert. Then common sense would assert itself: London was a big city and it would be a stroke of bad luck if their paths should cross purely by chance. Perhaps Bert had forgotten all about her or had found another victim to terrorise. Tilly put all thoughts of the Tuffins out of her head and concentrated on learning to be a type-writer, but it was far from easy. From early morning until evening, she sat in her dark corner of the office trying hard to master the machine. Although she had learnt her alphabet parrot-fashion at school it was little or no help, the keys of the typewriting machine having been arranged in a seemingly illogical fashion. Even when she found the correct letter, her fingers were stiff and she kept hitting the wrong keys. Bootle had shown her how to set out a business letter and all she had to do then was to transpose his neat copperplate into type, but she found that was easier said than done. Hunched over the typewriting machine and using just two fingers, Tilly peered at the handwritten material and then at the keyboard, searching for the right key and jabbing at it with cold sweat trickling down between her shoulder blades. The words were unfamiliar and she made so many mistakes that she wasted many sheets of expensive headed paper.

Bootle was kind and endlessly patient but the other clerks in the law firm were not; notably Jenks, a tight-lipped, acid-faced streak of a man, who was Mr Clarence Palgrave's clerk. On her first day, Tilly discovered that the Palgrave in Palgrave, Jardine and Bolt was not Barney but his uncle, Clarence Palgrave, QC. Barney was just a junior barrister and his easy-going attitude to his work was only tolerated because of his relationship to Mr Clarence, so Bootle confided in an unguarded moment after a heated discussion with Bragg that had left him flushed and out of temper.

Bragg was clerk to Himself, the legendary Mr Jardine who only dealt with the most important cases and was only ever seen from behind, disappearing towards the Law Courts in a flurry of black robes topped with a snowy white wig. Bragg treated Tilly as though she were a nasty smell beneath his supercilious nose, directing his remarks to Bootle and making it plain that he considered Tilly's employment in the law firm would not be a long one. With vitriol dripping off his tongue, Jenks never lost an opportunity to show how much he disapproved of having a young female working in the office, let alone one who was so patently useless that she was unworthy of being paid, even in brass washers.

Bootle listened politely to his complaints, smiled and nodded and somehow, with a talent that was all his own, he managed to change the subject, usually by throwing in a query about a particular court case. Tilly kept quiet in her corner, stabbing at the keys with her forefinger and pretending she was jabbing it into a part of Jenks's body that would cause him the most pain. She was trying her hardest, but Jenks grumbled about the amount of paper she had wasted and the time it took her to type out even the shortest letter. Passing by her desk he would bump her chair so that she made a mistake, or he would send her work flying to the floor without a word of apology. Tilly began to hate Jenks almost as much as she hated Bert Tuffin, but his antagonism made her even more determined to master the machine and become a proficient type-writer, if only to spite him.

In the first few weeks she saw little of Barney. Her position in the firm being lowly, she was not allowed to venture into his office uninvited, although he always greeted her with a cheery nod and a wink. Tilly couldn't help noticing that the female clients had a preference for Barney, and judging by the sounds of merriment coming from behind the closed door she guessed that he was more than sympathetic to their troubles. Well dressed, well heeled ladies, some of them Tilly suspected were not quite respectable, came to consult Barney. One day, curiosity got the better of her after Bootle had shown a woman of a certain age with suspiciously red hair and flashy clothes into Barney's office.

‘Who was that?'

Bootle perched on his stool, peering at her over the top of his spectacles. ‘Just a client.'

‘What sort of client?'

Bootle smiled vaguely. ‘A wealthy one, Miss Tilly. We don't ask questions, we just do our jobs.'

‘She didn't look like a criminal.'

‘The lady runs a certain type of house that gentlemen, who have not the advantage of a happy relationship with a wonderful woman like Mrs Bootle, might want to visit. If you get my meaning.'

‘You mean a knocking-shop?'

Bootle winced. ‘That's not a nice word for a young person to know, Miss Tilly.'

‘Mr Bootle, I come from Whitechapel. I ain't one of your well brought up young ladies. I know what's what.'

Polishing his spectacles on his handkerchief, Bootle went quite pink. ‘I should keep quiet about that if I were you, especially when Mr Jenks or Mr Bragg might be within earshot.'

‘I'm not daft, Mr Bootle. But I'd still like to know why these ladies want to see Mr Barney.'

‘A brush with the law in the matter of illegal goings on, or obtaining evidence in a divorce case; the more senior partners in the law firms might not be too eager to take on these cases. Best say no more on the subject.' Tapping the side of his nose, Bootle put on his spectacles and picked up his pen.

Sighing, Tilly went back to the painstaking task of typing with two fingers. So Barney took on clients that no one else wanted. She was hardly surprised but she did look up when the door opened and Barney ushered his client out of the office.

‘I'll leave the matter in your hands, Mr Palgrave, dear.'

‘Trust me, Mrs Jameson.'

‘Oh, I do, dear.' Mrs Jameson raised her gloved hand to touch Barney's cheek. ‘Thousands wouldn't.' Trilling with laughter, she stood back while Barney opened the outer door. With a cheerful wave to Bootle and a saucy wink, Mrs Jameson left the office. Tilly and Bootle exchanged glances as they listened to the receding footsteps and Mrs Jameson's high-pitched laughter growing fainter until the front door closed behind her. Barney returned with a satisfied grin on his face and headed towards his office.

‘Shall I send for Pitcher, sir?'

‘Yes, Bootle, of course. Right away, please.'

As the door closed on Barney, Tilly shot a curious glance at Bootle as he slid off his stool. ‘Who is Pitcher?' Whether he heard her or not, Bootle did not answer.

Minutes later, Pitcher arrived, the smell of unwashed body and the stables preceding him. Wrinkling her nose, Tilly watched him stride through the office dripping a trail of mud and straw off his boots onto the brown linoleum. She couldn't see much of his face beneath the felt hat pulled low down over his brow, but he did not appear to have shaved for a week at least. He could have been a stableman, a crossing sweeper or a rag-and-bone man, but whatever his occupation he went into Barney's office without knocking and closed the door behind him.

‘Don't ask,' Bootle said, bending his head over the document on his desk. ‘You don't need to know.'

Pitcher left in the same manner as he had arrived, passing Jenks in the doorway with a surly grunt.

‘So he's back,' Jenks said, curling his lip. ‘I'll have to inform Mr Clarence, Bootle. You know them above don't hold with the type of cases Mr Barney takes on. You should do something about it.'

Bootle shrugged and got on with his work. Seemingly frustrated, Jenks sidled over to Tilly's desk. ‘You're rubbish, my girl. A child of five could do better.'

Biting her lip, Tilly tried to ignore him.

‘Pay attention when I speak to you, miss.' Prodding her in the back, Jenks ripped the paper out of the typewriting machine.

‘Here, give it me.' Jumping to her feet, Tilly made a grab at the paper but Jenks was head and shoulders taller than she and he held the piece of paper high above her head, sneering.