by Andy Conway
Mrs Hudson disappeared in the pavement crowd. She was adrift. Alone in a Birmingham she didn’t recognize. And so was he.
He pushed on up the street. Nothing for it now. The important thing was to find Belle.
On the opposite side of the street stood the portico of the Society of Artists. Yes, that was still there too in his own time. He passed a chestnut seller and got a hot blast of heat and fragrance that made his belly roar. He’d eaten nothing today. He was starving.
Only he wasn’t. There really were people here who were starving.
He came up to the top of New Street and was knocked back by the force of what was there. Or what wasn’t.
There was no Council House. Instead, there was a great ugly church squatting where Victoria Square should be, and a mean row of houses that almost touched the corner of the Town Hall and spilled out to a little square where a street lamp sat. It was a village square, nothing like the great civic square he knew, guarded by Queen Victoria’s statue.
Carol singers huddled in the cold at the steps of the church and a gaggle of boys threw snowballs.
The street sign said Ann Street. Could there ever have been a time when the Council House hadn’t stood here? He was drawn to the first shop in the row. Suffield’s Pharmacy. Coloured bottles of liquid glowing in the window. The building was topped with battlements.
He looked all around but there was no sign of Belle.
If he found her now, he would tell her how he felt. He definitely would.
The carol singers rattled a tin. He shrugged and indicated his empty pockets. Did his costume look like that of a rich gentleman? It was painfully thin and he could have done with a greatcoat, the cold was so bitter.
The mouth of the church invited him. Would she be in there? He didn’t think so, but then, he didn’t know her, not really, not at all. For all he knew she might be in there praying devoutly.
He retreated along the curve of the church wall, shops inlaid. Across the road, the mouth of Pinfold Street, dark and foreboding.
He turned from it, about to move on, when he thought he saw something. The outline of a dark hooded figure. The Ghost of Christmas yet to Come stepped right out of the pages of Dickens’ book.
No. It was Belle.
He ran across the street, snow on his boots.
“Belle!”
The hooded figure turned and a face peered out of the murk. He ran to her.
“Belle. Is it you?”
She looked down and he knew she had not wanted to be found. She had run to escape capture. How stupid of him to run her to ground.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “We were worried for you.”
“You needn’t worry after me, Fred. There is nothing to be done.”
This was the moment. He should tell her how he felt. He should tell her he was in love with her and had been from the moment he’d seen her. But his tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth. They didn’t belong together. He wasn’t supposed to be here. This was all a bad dream and he would wake any moment and she would be gone — a desperate ideal he’d created in his unconscious mind: a ghost of a dream.
“You don’t have to marry him,” he said.
“Don’t I? What do you know about that?”
“You’re a free woman. You can do what you like.”
She scoffed. Like he was a silly boy.
“You think I know nothing of the world,” he said.
“You know nothing of my world.”
“I know my world is safer. I know the average age of mortality in London is 27. If you’re working class, it’s only 22.”
“But a life of privilege lies before me.”
“We all breathe the same air. Typhus is no respecter of class.”
She looked him up and down and seemed amused. “Tell me about your time. What does it offer to a woman like me?”
She pointed to the square and they walked out of the shadows towards the church and the carol singers.
“What does it offer? Well, for one thing, women over the age of 21 have the vote. There’s true equality at last. Oh, and there are aeroplanes, actual flying machines, and waterworks and sewage systems, motor cars and electricity, even indoor plumbing in some houses and medicine. So many diseases have been eradicated. A brave new world. An industrial revolution has reached its peak and transformed society and mechanized everything.”
“Including war?”
They came to the church steps and halted. The icy blast of challenge in her voice. He nodded and looked at his snow-covered boots. “Yes, there’s still a great deal of that, alas.”
“When you came here, you were bleeding.” She touched his forehead where the scar still glowed livid just under the brim of his top hat. “Was it some kind of war?”
“Of a sort. A riot. A street battle. A political thing.”
“Like the Chartists? Or Peterloo?”
“Yes, something like that. Men fighting over their beliefs.”
“So not much has changed a hundred years from now.”
He turned from her and clasped the railings, a man in prison, doubting himself. Was it really a better time? That dreadful Oswald Mosley and fighting fascists in the street. Perhaps it was better for her here.
“Are there still men like Swingeford?” she asked. “Men who wish to hoard all the money in the world and see everyone else go to hell?”
He nodded, all hope leaving him. “Yes, of course there are, but there is progress.”
She didn’t respond. He turned to find her gazing at him. Was he expected to say something? He could tell her he loved her, like he’d said he would.
She grimaced and turned away, digging in the folds of her cloak. She took out a coin and dropped it into the carol singers’ tin. And she was walking away. “We must return.”
He followed her down New Street. She crossed at the Society of Artists’ portico and he caught her up, trudging beside her down to the theatre. There was an urgency to her step. She was keen to get back to the theatre and, perhaps, to Swingeford. A carriage came roaring past and on down New Street.
“Mrs Hudson?” Belle said.
Fred looked up from his sulking.
“Mrs Hudson!” Belle yelled.
She was there on the street corner, just by the theatre, about to step into the road in front of the carriage.
“Stop!” Fred cried.
The carriage hurtled towards her, spraying slush into the gutter. A flurry of snow blinded him and it seemed she was lost in a snow cloud just as the carriage reached her.
— 22 —
MRS HUDSON STEPPED back and the coach-and-four roared past with an unearthly clatter, splattering slush up her cloak. She turned down Lower Temple Street, blinking, half snowblind, certain that the New Street Station of 2019 would be there when she reached the bottom of the hill.
A clockmaker’s window. She caught her reflection against the display of gleaming carriage clocks and paused, hypnotized, just for a moment, but pushed on down the hill.
“Mrs Hudson!” Fred yelled.
She froze. Caught.
Fred and Belle on the corner, rushing to her. Fred came and grabbed a hold of her arms. “I thought you’d gone under that coach. What are you doing?”
Mrs Hudson didn’t answer. She couldn’t tell him what was really on her mind. It suddenly felt like the worst betrayal.
Belle came and stood behind Fred. He looked over her shoulder at the row of drab buildings where New Street Station should be. “Don’t go.”
“What do you mean?”
“You want to go back. I can tell.”
“Look at this,” she said.
He looked around at it and smiled. “Yes. It’s amazing.”
“You call this amazing?”
“I do. I’ve just been up to Victoria Square.”
Belle frowned. Of course she did. Why would the square be named after a young queen who’d only just taken the throne?
“The Town Hall is the only thing I recogni
ze,” Fred said. “There’s no Council House. The Library isn’t even there behind it.”
“That old thing,” said Mrs Hudson. “It’s been and gone.”
“What? That beautiful building?”
“They replace it in 1965 with a new building. A big, ugly brutal thing.”
She sighed and shrugged. What was the point of telling him that too had been knocked down and a new big, futuristic glass building was going up in its place. Building and bulldozing, building and bulldozing, always and forever.
“Is it because of this war you mentioned?” Fred asked.
He murmured it but Belle heard and clutched her cloak tighter around her.
“The library? No. It survived the war. It just didn’t survive the town planners. Fred, you ought to go back to 1934. It’s safer there.”
“But there’s a bloody great war coming.”
“Yes and it will be terrible. But this city will survive it. And there’s a better world to be built after it.”
He shrugged, lost for words.
Belle gazed on him, curious to know what he would do.
“Don’t romanticize this,” said Mrs Hudson. “Every generation thinks what has the world come to? It was better in the good old days. But it’s nonsense. Look at this. Children and women begging in an open sewer. Life is hard and brutal here.”
He bowed his head and swallowed and looked back at Belle, and Mrs Hudson could see she was what kept him here. She was worth staying for. He was in love and it was hopeless.
She took his hand. “Ignore me, Fred, I’m just an old woman. Be amazed if you like. I’m the last person to deny anyone that sense of wonder.”
“I don’t know if I can go back,” he said.
“There’s always that danger.”
“How do you control it?”
“I suppose you have to have something to go back for.”
“I don’t think I have anything.”
“Then perhaps there’s something keeping you here.”
Belle shuffled and half turned away.
“You’ll work it out,” Mrs Hudson said.
“I don’t think I can do this without you.”
There it was, the deep need of another. Something she hadn’t felt in a long time. Or something she’d forgotten.
“Very well,” she said.
“You’re staying?” he asked, unable to hide his smile.
“I think I have something to do there, though I’m damned if I know what.”
Fred took her elbow and they walked back up the hill to the corner. Belle linked arms with the old lady and pulled her into the theatre.
She wondered if she would ever get home again.
— 23 —
EMILY CRATCHIT HOVERED on the chapel doorstep, shivering in the icy draught, trying to catch sight of a coach or carriage through the snowfall. They so rarely came down the Froggery way that you could wait for ages. Sometimes it was best to send a boy up to New Street to get one, but she couldn’t even see any boys.
Her poor Tim was out there in this, out there somewhere. Bob had sent word about his sacking and she’d nipped out when Mrs Jowett was on her shopping expedition and run home, but he wasn’t there. The poor boy must be distraught.
Five shillings a week lost. Which put an unearthly strain on Bob’s fifteen shillings and her own eight. How would they manage in the cold winter months beyond Christmas?
She shivered and pulled her shawl closer about her. A light from the glum window of the Dungeon across the street. There was a right bunch of Not Rights squatting in there, made you fearful of your safety on a dark night like this.
The sound of a horse coming down Pinfold Street and the swishing of wheels on snow came through the gloom and she stepped forward and raised her arm. But it was a drayman’s cart. Damn this cold and damn this whole day.
Last year Mrs Jowett had let her off a full hour early. “Go be with your family,” she’d said, “and a Merry Christmas to you all.” Emily had rushed home to Bread Street through the dingy lanes of the Froggery. It had been light still, she remembered, or was it just that the moon had been big and bright in the sky, almost a full moon, casting a spooky, spectral light over the snow. It made her shiver with fear and quicken her step to get home and light the stove, get a warm fire going to dispel any ghosts that might take it into their heads to come and haunt the Cratchit household.
Tonight was different. It was the last quarter, the moon a solid half-a-sixpence hanging above the faint outline of the Town Hall up there at the top of the hill, and Mrs Jowett needed her to stay on a little longer.
She retreated to the door, to feel at least a little warmth from the hallway on her back. A last quarter moon meant release, letting go, forgiveness. But how could you forgive a man like Swingeford, bullying your husband and sacking your son on Christmas Eve, and now lord knows where he’d got to? And that was this woman’s brother.
Though that wasn’t her fault. You couldn’t blame her for having a monster for a brother, no. But it had to affect everyone around. Mrs Jowett had been in fine spirits this morning, and then that odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling brother had called and, well, whatever it was he’d said had broken Mrs Jowett’s heart. She’d been all ajitter ever since, shaking she was. She’d barely been able to rise from the couch to make her annual trip to the stores to buy presents. And when she’d returned she was even worse. Billy the manservant had said she’d met her brother again at the Greek shop and they’d Had Words.
“I dain’t hear what they was, but I know when two people are Having Words, and they Had Words.”
He’d claimed he’d not heard the substance of these Words, but she’d pushed him till he looked over both shoulders, leaned close and told her, “Old Swingeford asked about Miss Ruth’s long-lost relations who’m visiting.”
“Relations? She don’t have no relations. She’s an orphan.”
“That’s what he said. But Mrs Jowett said she knew about them and it was true. She was an orphan but that dain’t mean she dain’t have no long lost relations.”
“But it can’t be true. I’ve known her near on since Tim was born and there’s never been any talk of relations.”
“Well, they’re here. And Swingeford seemed in a proper mard about it.”
Emily pondered how strange it was. Mrs Jowett had agreed to a lie. What was she up to?
And now Mrs Jowett was all flighty and distracted. Was it something to do with money? She had the look of a woman who knows the bailiff is coming but who tries to put on a smile for the sake of the children. Weren’t they all like that: putting on a false smile, pretending all was jolly, while the likes of Ebenezer Swingeford hammered at the door demanding every last penny, every single thing you had. That was what it felt like in these dark times and no mistake.
Another carriage, this one coming down Peck Lane. It sounded more hopeful. She rushed out to the corner and waved it down. A hansom cab, the driver perched on the rear. It would have to do.
“What ho, cabman!” she called. “Passage to New Street. Theatre Royal.”
He tipped his hat and pulled up right outside, the horse breathing great clouds of steam.
“Wait there!” She rushed back inside and through the hallway to the drawing room where Mrs Jowett sat in an armchair, gazing into the fire with a sad, forlorn look about her. “I’ve a cab, Mrs Jowett. Only a hansom.”
The old lady stood up too fast, juddered and swayed, but took up her walking stick and headed for the door.
“He’s right outside, Mrs Jowett. You’ll be at the theatre in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
Mrs Jowett halted and grasped Emily’s hand. “I need you a little longer, my dear.”
“Of course, Mrs Jowett. I’ll help you into the cab.”
“Come with me. Ride alongside me. See me to the theatre.”
Emily’s heart sank. There was no escape just yet. “Why, yes, Mrs Jowett.”
She guided the old lady out to the street, urging her
to watch her step in the snow, and walked her to the cab, opening the folding door and taking the lady’s weight as she climbed aboard. When she was in and settled, Emily ran round to the other side, looking both ways up and down the street in case a carriage or cart was coming, silent on the snow.
A pair of eyes at the window of the Dungeon.
A ghost face staring at her. She held its gaze for a moment. Then it was gone.
Shivering, she climbed into the cab and sat beside Mrs Jowett. The driver cracked his whip and turned the cab around the corner and cantered up Pinfold Street.
Mrs Jowett watched the buildings pass, the whole higgledy-piggledy row of shanty houses and jerry-built tenements constructed back to back without drainage. But she didn’t seem to even see it, any of it.
She took hold of Emily’s hand again and she felt that impulse to pull them away. Her ugly red raw hands against Mrs Jowett’s white silk gloves. They were horny hands. That was all you could call them. Dear simple Bob would hold them and kiss her fingers and she would cringe from him, they were so shameful. Who could love those hands? That was the simple soul her husband was, and wasn’t she lucky to have that. Always a jolly countenance to see them through.
And didn’t the likes of Swingeford take advantage of that.
And didn’t the likes of his sister take advantage as well.
The hansom climbed the last bit of the hill past the old orphanage, and the horse slowed, fighting to pull them the final few yards, its hooves slipping in the snow, snorting, skittering. The cabman cracked his whip on the poor beast’s flanks. It whimpered and pulled them the last yard and into the light of the square where the Town Hall stood and Christ Church.
She would be glad when this day was over. Mrs Jowett had been such a needy presence and Mrs Cratchit feared she would never escape her. Her dear Bob and tiny Tim would be at the theatre for the Harlequin, as always. It was her place to be at home, preparing the house for the holiday. Or at the market getting the last scraps of vegetables to scrape together some kind of feast.