by Alex Reeve
I had only seen my father once since I left home, though he hadn’t noticed me. It was shortly after I started as a porter in Westminster, and I was on my way to the late shift, strolling down Whitehall on a fine summer day. Ahead of me on the pavement was a man with a small dog, a terrier such as my father favoured. The dog stopped to sniff something, and the man turned, and there he was. I almost bumped into him. It was as if a memory had come to life.
He mumbled something to the dog and carried on, so I followed him, studying the thin strands of hair on the back of his neck and his bony hand as it held the leash. He was still tall, over six feet, and broad-bellied, but more stooped than I remembered. When I was young he used to walk at high speed, in great strides that I had to scamper to keep up with. No longer. Now, he was stiff-legged, waving his thanks to an omnibus driver who had stopped to let him cross the road. I continued onwards to the hospital, none the wiser about why he was there or where he was going.
And now he was dying, apparently. I searched inside myself, but this new information seemed illusory, a story about another man. I didn’t believe my father could ever die. He was like an old stone wall that might weather and crack but would never crumble away completely.
‘I stayed in touch with him,’ John said. ‘Especially after your mother … well, after she died. I heard he was very sick, so I went to visit him. He seemed extremely weak, I’m afraid. You must visit him soon, before it’s too late.’
‘I won’t do that.’
He wasn’t facing me, but I could see his angry expression in the mirrored glass behind the bar. He took a rapid gulp of his beer, almost slamming the tankard back down on the counter.
‘Why on earth not?’
‘Goodbye, John,’ I said, and marched out into the evening.
The following Monday, Alfie returned late, having been out for dinner with Mrs Gower. They had seen a lot of each other over the previous six months; twice weekly or more, having a common interest in walking around parks and admiring the flora, though it was recently acquired in his case.
He shook his umbrella and brushed the rainwater from his new coat, which had velvet lapels and a purple silk lining. He was sporting his new top hat as well, which he had become extremely fond of, often leaving it on the counter where everyone could see it.
‘Shall we have a whisky, Leo?’
He seemed excited to share his news.
A whisky was what I needed. It was one of my great delights, sitting side by side with Alfie, elbows on the counter, talking or remaining pleasantly silent while the light dimmed and the liquid in our glasses grew black. It occurred to me that if John Thackery chose to betray me, I might not be able to enjoy many more.
‘We walked back through the Botanic Gardens,’ Alfie said, as he poured. ‘She mentioned she’d like to be married again, some day.’ He must have noticed my disquiet because he patted my shoulder. ‘You’ll always have a home here, Leo. Nothing will change that.’
‘I know.’
He still thought he owed me a debt of gratitude, crediting me as the author of his financial recovery, following a long period of decline. I had asked a local businesswoman to send all her staff, and those of her friends in the industry, to Alfie to get their teeth fixed. That was more than a year ago, and word of his talents had travelled widely since. Of course, what remained unspoken was the exact nature of the businesswoman’s trade. No one wants to be known as the whores’ dentist. But still, these days he could afford to buy expensive new coats and top hats, not to mention court a widow who owned a house in Pimlico with servants and a horse and carriage.
All the changes happening; I felt as if everyone was on a road to somewhere, crissing and crossing, all except me. I wished everything would stay still.
‘Do you want to be married again?’
‘Yes, I think it’s time.’
‘So, you’re going to ask her, are you?’
His face darkened, and he bit his lip. ‘Not yet. I haven’t mentioned it to Constance. But she’ll be delighted, I’m sure. She needs a mother at her age, and Mrs Gower is a fine woman.’
I almost felt sorry for Alfie’s new belle. Constance’s silences could be wintry, and she was capable of the most formidable politeness, which had been known to reduce seasoned adults almost to tears.
‘You’ll have to tell her soon,’ I said.
He nodded, his mood sagging at the thought of it.
We didn’t talk for a while, each musing on our respective futures, until Alfie raised his eyebrows at me. ‘Constance told me you’d had a lady-friend yourself, a few months back.’
‘Mrs Flowers and I were amicable for a short while, that’s all.’
He chuckled, unable to help himself. ‘I’m sorry, Leo, but it’s made such a difference to me to have someone. It could make a difference to you too. You can’t just sit around all the time. You have to go out and see people.’
‘I do see people. I go to work and I play chess with Jacob every Thursday.’
He laughed again. ‘Chess with Jacob will certainly keep you cosy on those long, cold nights.’
I didn’t laugh with him. At one time, I used to imagine myself coming home to a bustling wife, kissing her and pulling her on to my lap as she told me about her day and I told her about mine. I could almost feel her head on my shoulder and her hair tickling my cheek. But the woman I had loved was dead, and in the unlikely event I ever found another who would overlook my obvious affliction, I would be importuning her to commit fraud, and that would be a poor exchange indeed.
‘I do wish people would stop telling me what’s good for me,’ I said, aware that I was sounding sour. I understood that he wished me to be happy, but his insistence upon the method of it was wearying.
‘All right.’ He was staring at the rows of bottles and packets displayed in the window, but then leapt up from his chair. ‘Bloody hell,’ he exclaimed, pointing. ‘Those urchins again!’
In the doorway, two figures were huddled together, sheltering from the rain.
‘What difference does it make?’ I asked, curious why Alfie was so bothered. He wasn’t normally one to make a fuss about such things.
‘They were there this morning when I opened.’ He fished his keys out of his pocket. ‘That exact spot. A customer had to move them to get into the shop. It’s a bit much.’
He unlocked the door and threw it open. One of the urchins squeezed closer to the other, and I had a brief view of scared eyes and dark, curly hair. The city was riddled with children like these, sleeping on benches, under trees, in doorways, begging on pavements, rifling through bins for scraps and knocking on doors selling posies of flowers stolen from parks and cemeteries.
‘Please go somewhere else,’ Alfie said, handing each of them a farthing. He wasn’t an unkind man.
They took the money and started to move away, clutching on to each other, shivering in the cold. The smaller one looked back, and I realised who she was. Who they both must be.
They were the children of Dora Hannigan.
5
‘Wait!’ I called after them.
They stumbled on, into the brief light from next door’s window and then the shadow beyond. I might have lost them altogether if a young gentleman hadn’t been pushing a bicycle along the pavement in the opposite direction, forcing them to stop.
‘I just want to talk to you,’ I said.
They shuffled back towards the doorway, the boy leading his sister by the hand. She looked exhausted, almost falling down where she stood, pressing against his arm for comfort.
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.
Neither of them answered. The boy was as grim-faced as when I’d last seen him, except now he kept his eyes fixed on Alfie, being sure to stay out of his reach.
Alfie stared at me in astonishment. ‘Do you know them?’
‘Not exactly.’ And then more quietly so the children wouldn’t hear. ‘Their mother was killed. I’ll take care of it. You go to bed.’
He seemed doubtful. ‘All right, but don’t get caught up in this, Leo. Remember what happened last time.’
‘I’ll lock up.’
I opened the door wide, but the children didn’t move.
‘Come on,’ I said to them. ‘It’s warmer indoors.’
The boy looked at his sister, and in they came, hand in hand.
I wasn’t sure what to do next. The police should certainly speak to them, but it was late in the evening and Hooper would most likely be at home. He didn’t seem the type to work long shifts.
‘Do you know what happened to your mother?’ I asked. ‘Were you at the club on Rose Street when it happened? What did you see?’ The little girl edged behind her brother, peeping at me from around his shoulder.
Perhaps I had been taking too direct an approach. I changed tack.
‘Do you have a father?’
The boy took a step sideways and glanced at the door out of the corner of his eye. His grip on his sister’s hand tightened.
I really had no idea how to speak to children. I supposed Constance had been about this boy’s age when I had first met her, but I probably didn’t say more than two words to her in those first few months. And anyway – and there was truly no other way to express this – she was Constance. It was not the same.
I tried to remember how it felt to be this young, and how people used to speak to me. The one adult I had known well, aside from my parents, was Bridget, our maid. I used to spend hours with her in the kitchen, dipping a thumb into the molasses and stealing pinches of sugar while she prattled about whatever came into her head: an acquaintance she’d met, a new shop she’d been to, a joke she’d heard. She was so garrulous that if I hadn’t been there I swear she would’ve chattered to the stove, or the pastry, or her fingers.
I couldn’t be like Bridget; I couldn’t say that many words in a whole month. But there was something I could take from my time in that kitchen.
‘Would you like some porridge?’ I asked, and they nodded in unison.
They ate fast and skilfully, skimming their spoons across the top for the coolest part before digging in properly, and finally, when all but the dregs had been consumed, running their fingers around the bowl and sucking them clean.
I watched, envious of their voraciousness. I could never eat like that. Jacob sometimes said I resembled a scarecrow, which was fine coming from him, a man with holes in the elbows of his jacket and buttons missing from his shirts. But he never wondered why I starved myself. I relished those soft curves on a woman, but not on me. Never on me.
When the children had finished their porridge and munched their way through an apple each from Alfie’s store, cores and all, and downed two cups of boiled water, and eaten two pieces of bread with honey, and asked for more and been declined for the sake of their stomachs, I sat down at the table with them.
‘Do you want to see a trick?’ I asked.
I fished ten coins from my pocket and balanced them on the back of my forefinger. In one movement, I snatched them out of the air … or I intended to anyway. Actually, I was a fraction too slow, being out of practice, and sprayed them across the room.
‘Damn it! Wait.’
I scrabbled around the floor picking up the coins while the children watched, unsure whether this was part of the trick or I was some kind of idiot.
Once again, I balanced the pennies and farthings on the back of my finger, and this time caught them perfectly. It was as if they’d disappeared from out of the air. The girl yawned and laid her head on her arms on the table, but the boy’s eyes widened and he put out his hand for the coins.
I made myself a pot of tea while he tried the trick for himself. He had already worked up to five coins by the time the kettle boiled, somewhat dampening my sense of achievement.
‘What’s your name?’ I asked him.
His mouth was set hard, as though he was wondering whether to tell me. Eventually he muttered, ‘Aiden.’
‘And your sister?’
He put his hand on her forearm. She opened a bleary eye and closed it again, falling instantly back to sleep.
‘She’s Ciara.’
He used words frugally, as if he was feeding treats to a dog to keep it docile.
‘How old are you?’ He said nothing, and I took a sip of my tea. Upstairs, I could hear snoring from Alfie’s room. ‘Eight, maybe?’
‘Ten,’ he answered quickly. No child wants to be thought of as younger than they actually are.
‘And Ciara?’
He frowned, looking up at the ceiling. He seemed to be genuinely trying to remember. ‘Six.’
Constance’s cat, Colly, sprang up on to the table and nosed towards Ciara’s bowl, and Aiden stretched forwards to stroke her tabby fur, his head cocked on one side.
‘Do you have a cat?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘We had a dog, once. We called him Patch because he had a patch over one eye.’
Not much imagination there, I thought, but at least it was a conversation. He had the resilience of all children. His mother was dead, and yet here he was, talking and drinking a cup of water as if the world had not changed. Then it occurred to me that he might not know. If that was the case, I would have to tell two children that their mother had been murdered. How did one do that?
He was restless, drumming his fingers on the table and squirming in his seat as though an agitation was building up within him, and he might leap up at any moment and run from the room.
‘Were you living at the club on Rose Street?’ I asked him, keeping my voice low and calm.
He shrugged, which I took to mean yes. His eyes remained harsh, watching me from under a fierce brow.
‘Do you have anywhere to stay now?’
He shook his head and yawned a childish yawn, mouth wide and uncovered, no hint of self-consciousness.
Again, I wondered what I should do. I couldn’t turn them out. Two innocents like these, in well-patched clothes and with all their limbs and eyes intact, they would be taken for certain. They would be put to work, and in another few years, perhaps very few, this little girl would be being sold on the street. Virgins were highly prized and could be freshly deflowered three or four times a night.
I shook myself. That would not happen to these children. I wouldn’t allow it.
‘You can stay here tonight,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow, I’ll work out what to do with you. Do you understand?’
Ciara didn’t wake when I picked her up. She rested her head on my shoulder, her feet dangling limply. Aiden followed us upstairs and removed his boots before entering my room. His hair, freed from his cap, was tightly curled around his head like a jet-black helmet. He took off his jacket and trousers and stood in his small-clothes, narrow and pale, his shoulders like hazelnuts and his legs like wheat-stalks. I laid his sister on my bed, intending shortly to move her on to the floor, but she curled up beneath the blanket and her brother crawled in beside her. He was asleep in seconds.
I sat on my chair for a while, listening to their slow breathing, and then lay resentfully on the rug.
I hadn’t been able to change, and, worse, the cotton bandage I wore to flatten my breasts beneath my shirt was damp and abrading my skin. I called it my cilice after the sackcloth vests worn by Christian monks, though I bore it not to repent my sins but to hide them. I sought no forgiveness from God.
I could take it off easily enough, but how would I tie a new one in the morning without the children noticing? I had no choice but to suffer.
Tomorrow, I would take them to Detective Hooper on my way to work. And after that? They would likely go to relatives, I supposed, who probably wouldn’t be thrilled by the extra mouths to feed. And if no relatives existed, where would they go, the children of an unwed mother? My eyes strayed towards the bookshelf, to Oliver Twist; I had first read it at age twelve, and the terror of the workhouse had never left me.
Sleep would not come. It wasn’t yet close to dawn; no clatter of carts along the cobbles of So
ho and no chorus of birds in the nearby churchyard. Even the stray dogs, normally disposed to bark and howl all night to one another across the city like a canine telegraph, were hushed. Everyone was asleep but me.
The scene of their mother’s murder was plaguing me. To start with, there was no way to tell whether she had been killed where she was buried or if her body had been transported to that dank courtyard from somewhere else.
If she’d been killed in the courtyard, why hadn’t anyone been alerted by the commotion? Surely, if someone was attacked in that small space, surrounded by lodgings, they would scream for help.
But if she’d been transported, then why to that spot? Awful as it was to contemplate, wouldn’t it be easier to tip her into a canal or leave her in some alley?
Neither option appeared to make any sense.
I wondered if the children knew the answer. Part of me hoped they did, so the criminal would be caught, but another part hoped not, in case that criminal was John Thackery. I went cold at the thought and pinched myself hard under my armpit with the nails of my thumb and forefinger, gritting my teeth at the pain. What a self-regarding oaf I was, wishing the children had not witnessed their mother’s murder for my own sake, rather than theirs.
I was halfway between sleeping and waking when I heard a noise, a thin shriek. I jumped up, fumbling for a match. Aiden was awake too, kneeling on my bed.
I heard him grunt with effort, and then mutter, ‘Not now.’
He was crouching over Ciara, holding her shoulders while she thrashed to and fro. She was shaking and kicking as though overtaken by hysteria. It was she who had cried out, but now she was silent, aside from her teeth grinding together in her mouth.
I lit the candle and held it up. ‘What’s wrong with her?’
Aiden continued restraining his sister, accepting the blows and scratches from her flailing hands. She was completely unaware of us. Her eyes were rolled back in her head.
‘It happens sometimes,’ he said.
I took her hand, feeling the spasms and convulsions gradually diminishing, until finally they ceased altogether and she closed her eyes.