by Lily Hammond
‘How many of them do you think there are?’ whispered a woman beside her.
‘Hundreds,’ Clemency answered. ‘400 or so?’
The woman shivered. ‘Looks like thousands, all bunched up in the street like that.’
And in such a mood too. Restive, unhappy. Clemency watched, held her breath as someone on the steps of the Hospital Board addressed the crowd, turned them away.
She stayed, waited. ‘Do you always work on a Saturday?’ she asked one of the women beside her.
‘Until lunchtime,’ one of them replied. It was past lunchtime now, but no one was moving. Not until the crowd down there in the street did.
Which they did, surging away in another heaving tidal wave, back towards George Street and the wealthy grocery stores there, violence in their eyes, in their thrusting movement, in the crowd’s roaring voice.
Clemency followed. And recorded it all.
Chapter Six
Earlier that morning, the café was closed when Eliza stood outside it in her new dress. Frowning in puzzlement, she pressed her face to the window and peered inside. The counter was bare, no scones gently steaming up their glass domes, no pile of teacups, white and clean despite the odd crack in their thick sides, and no clatter from the kitchen. No waitress with cracked brown leather shoes and heavy eyebrows who, if not exactly friendly towards Eliza, then didn’t seem any longer to be quite a stranger.
Turning away, Eliza frowned at the footpath, shying away from the traffic going by. Why was it closed? It was unexpected, the café being closed, and she felt suddenly unmoored, cast adrift again on a great raft of things she didn’t know or understand. Casting a glance back at the shop, she saw the writing on the door, knew enough to guess by the shape of the arrangement that it would tell her the opening and closing hours if only she could read it. But reading it was not something she knew how to do, and so she was left to drift along the pavement puzzling over it.
She smoothed her left palm down over the dress at her hips. It was clean – she’d lugged water up to her room in the wash jug the day before and tipped a little carefully into the bottom of the bowl before dipping the dress into it and scrubbing it thoroughly with the sliver of soap that had come with the room. The water had been cold, but still it had come away dark with dirt, and the dress had emerged after two careful rinsings even bluer and brighter than Eliza had expected. She’d draped it over the windowsill to dry and now it smelled of sea breezes and sunshine, a good combination, clean.
Eliza was clean too. She’d slipped into the bathroom, turning to lock the heavy door behind her before drawing a bath, measuring the water until it was as deep as she’d dared it to be in the old, scoured tub, and billowing with heat. She’d clutched her tiny piece of soap and when she was done bathing, it was completely gone.
She hadn’t met anyone else on her trips up and down the stairs. Part of her had been hoping to, hoping that she might be able to strike up some sort of acquaintance with the other boarders, but not a door had opened to see her; there hadn’t been any stirring behind them either, and she had good hearing. The stairs creaked and groaned under her weight, and it was as if it was a signal for everyone to freeze as she went past.
Glancing back at the café, Eliza frowned, narrowing her eyes against the morning brightness and the confusion of finding the shop closed. She’d been hoping for a cup of tea to fortify her before setting off to search for the hospital. Maybe a piece of toast with a nice smearing of butter. But the café was closed, and there was probably a reason why, which Eliza struggled over. She moved on, down the road, making for the streets outside the tight circle she’d become accustomed to.
She knew when she’d hit one of the main thoroughfares of this strange city. Suddenly, the road was wide, the buildings ornate, imposing stone leaning forward over the road, dwarfing her. She stared up at them with a dry mouth, skimming over the signs, searching for things she recognised, dodging the great columns that rose imperiously at their entrances.
There were small shops – selling cigarettes and magazines – and Eliza pressed her nose to one of them, blinking at the dim interior, mouth watering when she saw an arrangement of small packages that reminded her of the chocolate her mother had sometimes bought her on her birthday.
She stepped back from the glass, then rubbed at the sweaty smear her hand had left on the glass. It had been a perfect, five-fingered outline and she scrubbed at it with a vague, unsettled feeling of shame, as though she’d done something wrong to look in the window at things she couldn’t have.
But it had finally occurred to her why things might be closed. Back home, she’d had a day off from the laundry each week, and the shops had been closed then too. She had used to walk past the shops on the main street sometimes, wishing they were open. She wanted one day to go into the draper’s, to run her hands over the smooth, pretty fabrics, to even perhaps hold them up against herself, twirl in the mirror that would be there in the depths of the shop somewhere, and imagine what she might have made, if she could.
Perhaps this was one of the days when the shopkeepers kept their doors closed. Perhaps they did that here too, in this peculiar city that sat hunched over the harbour, hills of wild greenery like a mossy wrapper around it.
She nodded to herself, satisfied that she had come up with an explanation. Her handprint against the glass was gone too, as though she’d never put it there. She rubbed at her arms in the thin fabric of their sleeves, suddenly chilled under the striped shop awning.
Then finally she noticed the stream of men who strode along the street, their hats shadowing their faces, expressions under them grim, hard.
She shrank back, then pushed herself upright again, sifting around in her head for the meaning of the sea of men – and a few women, she noticed, whose faces too were harsh, unhappy.
Where were they all going? Eliza lifted a hand, opened her mouth, but no one noticed her on the footpath in her blue dress with the cheerful little sailboats, and as well they didn’t, she supposed, her hand lapsing back to her side. Because she could not have asked her questions, had she been able to try.
Her questions swam around inside her head, bright darting fish.
Where was everyone going?
Cautiously, experimentally, Eliza paced along beside the wash of people, not stepping off onto the road to stride along beside them, weaving in and out of the trams that hooted and tooted to push them aside, but following gingerly along the edges, eyes wide, hands plucking at her mother’s old handbag.
The swath of people caught her up and drew her along in their wake, bringing her bobbing along the broad street where she flicked a wide-eyed gaze up at the ornate buildings lining the road. Never had she seen such fine buildings rearing up over her in white and grey stone, crenelated, turreted, strong classical columns holding everything up. She wondered at them, marvelled at them, head swivelling left to right and back again as the flow of people pushed her along, threatened for a moment to spit her out at a great crossroads, but instead took her up again and pushed her up a hill, before spilling her – finally, firmly – onto the edge of a great octagonal space thronged with even more men, all faces turned to the left, looking up the hill.
Eliza looked with them, mouth opening and closing like a beached fish, hands bracing herself unaware against more glass windows as the tide pressed her tight to the edge of the crowd.
She blinked at the building that held everyone’s attention. It reared up from a great stone set of steps like nothing she’d seen before. A high, thin tower rose from the building, piercing the blue sky, the flat face of a clock looking back at her from its side, and high, high on top of it all, a flag she only half recognised flapped like a lazy gull wing in the breeze. It was blue, the union flag of home in one corner, and then stitched upon a blue the colour of the night sky were stars. Eliza stared up at it, then lifted her face to the sky, wondering if out there somewhere she might see real versions of the stars stitched into the night sky.
&
nbsp; On the boat over from England, one of the ladies had taken her onto the deck, tucking her under her arm so that Eliza could smell the faintly sour smell of the lady’s sweat mingled with the salt from the sea and she’d pointed her arm up towards the sky telling Eliza to look look look.
And Eliza had looked, head tipped back, mouth open then like now, taking in the wide bowl of night sky, a bright sheath of stars overhead that made her gasp at their brilliance. The woman next to her had smiled, starlight brightening her cheeks, and her arm had moved to point out one cluster after another, naming them things that Eliza couldn’t remember, but whose sounds had been almost unbearably beautiful under the deep, broad sky with the woman pressed so close to her that Eliza could feel the rise and fall of her chest, the vibration of her ribs as she breathed out the names of the stars.
It was one of Eliza’s favourite memories and she could almost feel on her skin the impression of the woman’s body pressed next to hers, hot like the stars themselves.
A shout went up from the crowd, and hastily, Eliza dropped her gaze from the stitching of the stars on the flag and from her memories and looked around for the source of the crowds anger.
They were angry. She shrank back some more against the window, feeling the plate glass cold through the thin fabric of her new summer dress.
It frightened her, this crowd, these men with their faces set in anger, desperation, their chins stubbled, their eyes shadowed, features etched out in harsh shadows. Their fists were raised too, and their lungs bellowed at the figures standing atop those stone steps.
Eliza cast frantically around for an escape. She hadn’t asked to get swept along with these people. She didn’t know what they were angry at. Perhaps it was their thinness, she thought – they looked as skinny as the old alley cat that had prowled outside her window sometimes, yowling his displeasure at the world. Eliza blinked. She couldn’t go back there, get lost in the churn of thoughts, memories that swam around in her head like goldfish in a bowl.
Her mother’s bag was still gripped tight in her hand, and she clung to it, edging herself along the cold glass until there was wood and stone pressing painfully into her back and she was around the corner and gasping, standing on her own two feet like driftwood flung high above the tideline.
For a long moment, she didn’t know where she was placed in the world. Which street had she come up to arrive here on this spot? Her hands shook and she shivered, wishing she’d not worn the new dress after all, but instead had her heavy winter blouse buttoned up tight, and the woollen skirt with the drooping hem.
There was a café across the way and she moved towards it because it was the only thing she recognised. Not because she’d been there before, but because it was open, and inside she could see men and women, holding cups of tea, their eyes wide, looking out the window past her at the crowd.
Maybe she could have a cup of tea. Her mother always said it soothed the nerves.
She shook her head, glancing again at the crowd. Whatever these men and women were upset about, it wasn’t anything Eliza Sparrow could do anything about, or be part of. Not with her dumb throat that couldn’t yell at the men up there on the steps, who lifted their arms and shouted back in return.
She lunged from shop to shop, making her way around the ragged edges of the crowd, ducking her head and peering out from under the brim of her hat, handbag tucked up against her chest, both hands gripping the worn handle. The crowd heaved and swayed around her. She hurried.
Somewhere was the hospital. She had come this far; she must carry on. Somewhere on one of these streets she would stumble upon the hospital, able perhaps to recognise it by the smell of it. Ammonia and despair. That’s the way the one back at home had smelled, and sharp enough to make the eyes water.
She wondered as she moved, if this one too would be a mental hospital. Hopefully not, she decided. There were other sorts of hospitals.
Although, any hospital would do. Lifting her eyes, she slipped down into another unnamed street, trying to fix it into her head so that she could retrace her steps, then looked along the rooftops, searching for the tell-tale chimney that would speak of the sorts of places that meant hospital, laundry.
This street was wide too, the shops along its length sitting in their prosperous rows, mullioned windows gazing back at Eliza as she slunk past blinking at the fine things on display in their backlit depths.
Here was where you shopped, she decided, if you weren’t poor Eliza Sparrow with only a few silver and copper coins in her little red purse. She patted her thigh without thinking about it, reaching for her pocket, the purse.
It wasn’t there; this dress with its boats had no pockets, and for a moment, Eliza stood stock still, the roar and rumble of the crowd at her back and her heart stuttering in her chest. Where was her purse? Where was the little bit of money that was all that stood between her and starvation?
She swallowed, and her mouth was dry as though in anticipation of hunger. Someone shoved into her from behind.
‘Mind where you’re standing!’
She turned and faced them blindly, but they pushed on past her, grumbling.
‘Best get out of the way. They’ll be coming shortly.’
Eliza cast around desperately. Who were they? Who was coming? Where was her purse with its small jangle of coins?
Another person knocked into her with a shouted ‘Oi!’ and she spun around into the road, her heel catching on the kerb, sending her stumbling down onto one knee, grazing the thin skin against the stones. She flung her palm down to keep from tumbling and grazed that too.
Then rose a great noise, like a tidal wave, a huge rush and roar of water coming closer and she bent her head down over her knees, too frightened to move, and heard underneath the oncoming noise the wheeze of her own moaning.
A strong hand grasped her arm and hoisted her up.
‘Quickly, or you’ll be trampled.’
Eliza let the hand tug her upright, her knee and hand stinging, crusted with fine bits of gravel, and she let herself be pulled back onto the footpath and dragged into the dimness of a doorway.
‘All right, then? That was a nasty tumble.’
Eliza nodded blindly and a sun-gold face materialised from the gloom, eyes a startling green under their fair lashes, the wide mouth moving as it asked her if she was going to be all right. She nodded again, and the face looked at her for a moment too long, making her flush with a sudden inexplicable heat that made her want to duck her head and hide again, then it nodded, and there was a flash of white teeth as it smiled suddenly at her.
‘You’ve lovely hair. If you ever want to be photographed, give me a bell.’
Something was pressed into Eliza’s hand, the one that was injured, and she let go a hiss of pain and dropped whatever the thing was. It fluttered white in her vision to the ground and she watched it fall before looking up to see again who had given her it.
But whoever it was had gone, and in their wake was only the white rectangle on the ground and the faint scent of perfume, citrussy and clean. Eliza lifted her face and sniffed the air gently, but the scent that had blossomed a second ago was also gone.
She bent, wincing at the pain in her knee and touched her fingers to the white card on the ground, then picked it up and turned it over.
There were words on the other side. Neat rows of them that danced on the page like a chorus line as Eliza squinted at them, pursing her lips and willing them to stand still, tell her what they knew.
They told her nothing.
She looked up again, hoping to find the woman who had rescued her, and who had given her the clean white card, but she was gone. Instead, the crowd had caught up with Eliza and she shrank back against the door, tucked safely out of the way as it rushed past in a frenzy of frayed suits, hats, tempers.
Chapter Seven
‘There’s going to be more trouble of the sort, you mark my words.’
Clemency shook her head. ‘I don’t disagree with you. It’s ine
vitable. You should have seen them, Maxine. Such a big crowd, so angry.’
‘So hungry.’ Maxine straightened from the garden that had taken over almost her entire lawn and rubbed her lower back. ‘I’m getting too old for this,’ she said.
Clemency laughed. ‘You love it.’ She nodded toward the house. ‘And fortunately, you’ve a whole houseful of help, even though this garden is definitely your baby. You do let them help, right?’
Maxine lifted her dark eyes to Clemency. ‘I do,’ she said and gave a laugh herself. ‘Sometimes. Seriously though, it’s one of the conditions of staying here. Everyone has to pitch in.’
Clemency nodded. Of course that was the way it was. ‘Riley packed some things for you,’ she said, changing the subject and getting up from the garden bench where she’d been lounging while Maxine niggled at the parsnips in the garden.
‘That is excellent news,’ Maxine said, wiping the dirt from her hands. ‘We’re very short on her lemon curd. Tell me you’ve brought more of that. And of the current jam. It raises everyone’s spirits to have a bit of sweetness on the daily bread.’
Clemency nodded across at Maxine in admiration. ‘You’re a wonder worker, you know that, right?’
Maxine grinned, but a moment later, her expression turned to a grimace. ‘Someone has to do it. The Health Board isn’t doing anything. There are women who are literally starving.’
But Clemency shook her head. ‘Not these ones, at least. They have a roof over their heads and full stomachs.’
‘Reasonably full stomachs. There’s enough to go around, but only just.’ Maxine turned to her. ‘I’m going to have to turn away the next woman who comes knocking.’ She blinked, and knew Clemency saw the strain in the little lines and creases around her eyes. This Depression was aging all of them. Too quickly. ‘And if I have to do that, Clemency, it’s going to break my heart.’
Clemency’s own heart squeezed in sympathy. Here was Maxine hurting – Maxine who was always so pragmatic. Clemency squared her shoulders.