The Winter Rose

by Jennifer Donnelly

"I'll have that," Susie said, reaching for the money. "I've got the whole parlor to refurbish thanks to you."

  "Leave it," Sid said.

  He looked at the prostitute's face. He saw bruises and scars. Some fresh, some old. He saw her thin, wasted limbs and the threadbare gown covering them. He looked into her eyes and saw something else--a har-rowing fear. Not for herself, but for her child. She was hanging on, fighting the poison, fighting the pain, trying to find someone to care for her child.

  Sid looked, and saw another woman dying, long ago. Not in a room, but in the street. His mother. He saw her white face, her bloodstained clothes. And he wondered if she had felt this woman's terror at leaving her children behind, alone and unprotected in a place like Whitechapel. He remem-bered holding her lifeless body, trying to stop the constables from taking her away. The despair he'd felt then, the rage and the guilt, flooded back.

  "Number eighteen Wentworth Street ...Mrs. Edwards ...she has her....Please ... oh, God!" Molly clutched her stomach again, curling into herself, keening with the pain.

  "Listen. Listen to me," Sid said, kneeling by the bed. "The baby'll be all right. I'll see that she's looked after. I promise."

  Molly closed her eyes. Tears ran down her cheeks. She gave a wrenching cry, then started to convulse.

  "Christ, somebody help her," Sid said wildly. "Call for a doctor. Ronnie, get Dr. Jones. Go!" Some of the girls gasped; others started to cry. "Susie! Frankie! Get her up!" Sid yelled.

  The woman's tortured body shuddered through another convulsion and then she was still.

  "Jesus Christ," he whispered.

  "Guv, it's all right," Frankie said. "It's just a dead brass, is all."

  "Shut up, Frankie," Sid said. His hand came up to his head again. The pain inside it was so great, it was nearly blinding. He looked around. At the dingy flocked wallpaper, the stained bed, and the dead woman upon it. At the vomit on the floor and the human wreckage in the doorway. And he felt sick to his very soul.

  "Get her out of here. Get her buried," Sid said.

  "We can't bury her. There'll be too many questions," Frankie said. "We'll take her to the river. Like Susie said to."

  Sid thought of the little girl. How she'd never know her mother. A grave would be something. Somewhere to go. Years from now. Somewhere to mourn.

  "Take her to Christ Church. To the digger there. Do it now."

  "He'll talk."

  "Pay him not to!" Sid shouted, turning on Frankie.

  "Sid, she's a fucking whore!" Frankie yelled back. "She's not worth the risk! Not now, when Donaldson's on top of us."

  Their noise drew attention. All down the long hallway, doors opened. Disheveled girls and their punters peered out from them.

  "Go back inside. This doesn't concern you," Sid said.

  Some did, some didn't.

  "What's the matter? Are you bleedin' deaf?" he yelled.

  A man who was standing in a nearby doorway, puffing on a cigar said, "Who the hell are you?"

  His voice was like a match to a fuse. Sid was on him in an instant. He punched him in the face, shattering his nose. The man dropped to his knees, screaming. Sid picked him up, dragged him into the sitting room, and threw him against a table. It collapsed under his weight. The bottles of whisky and gin on top of it smashed. Girls flattened themselves against the walls of the room, or hid behind furniture, squeaking with fright. The man tried to get up. Sid stood over him.

  "You know who I am now?" he asked.

  The man moaned.

  "Good. Get your things and get out."

  Susie crawled out from behind the settee where she'd hidden. "That's bloody great, Sid! Look what you've done!" she shrilled. "Smashed up me table and all me booze! Who's going to pay for that? Me, I suppose?"

  Sid turned to her. He took a wad of notes from his pocket, peeled off one after another, and tossed them into the air. They fluttered to the carpet. He threw the whole wad up. It contained hundreds of pounds. Far more than the cost of the broken furniture. The girls scrambled for the notes. Susie, still on her hands and knees, snatching up as many as she could, screeched at them to leave off.

  "What are you doing, guv?" Frankie shouted. "You lost your mind?"

  "Get the woman buried. Then find her baby," he said. "Find someone to look after it. Give whoever it is fifty quid and tell her to come to me for more. Tell her if anything happens to the baby, it's me she'll answer to."

  "But, Sid..."

  Sid closed his eyes, trying to control his anger. He didn't want to hit Frankie. He really didn't. "Don't say another word. Do what I told you to."

  Frankie shook his head. He stalked off to the dead woman's room and began wrapping her body in the dirty bedsheets. Ronnie helped him. Susie, standing now and stuffing money down the front of her dress, looked dag-gers at him, but said nothing. The Taj was emptying. Some men stayed, but most hurried down the stairs and out the door. Sid watched them go, then he walked through the parlor, down another hallway, to a room he used as an office. It had been Denny Quinn's office once. Denny had been mur-dered in it. The stains were still on the floor.

  He sat down at the desk and lowered his head into his hands. He had wanted to fetch India to try to save Molly. Now he was glad there had been no time. He remembered how angry she'd been about the whores at Ko's. What would she have thought of this place? And of him for keeping it?

  She would have blamed me for Molly's death, he thought. And she would have been right.

  "Damn you, woman. Damn you!" he shouted.

  He picked up an inkwell and hurled it at the wall. He threw books, ledgers, a lamp. He kicked the desk until it splintered. And then, played out and panting, he leaned over, hands on his knees, to catch his breath, and saw a box under the desk tied up with brown paper and string. It had arrived yesterday from Amsterdam, hidden in the hold of a ship. He swore at it, then picked it up.

  "This is it. One last visit and then I'm done with you. Done," he said.

  He left the Taj, got into his carriage, and gave his driver an address. Inside, he sat back and looked at his hands. They were shaking. He never shook. Never. He felt like he was going to bits. He looked out the window, trying to focus on something else. He saw London's night people go by. Waiters closing down restaurants. Drunks staggering. Toffs hopping into cabs. Beggars. Streetwalkers. Sailors on a binge. He pressed his hands to his eyes, took a deep breath, then studied them again. They were still shaking. He cursed, lit a cigarette, took a few drags, then threw it out the window. Finally the driver pulled up to his destination--Bedford Square, Bloomsbury.

  He didn't get out for some time. He just sat in the carriage, looking up at the building. In one of its windows he could see a woman sitting at a desk. She was illuminated by the glow of a lamp.

  I'm done with you, he'd said back at the Taj. But he didn't want to be. He wanted to be up there, with her. He wanted to rest his head in her lap, put his arms around her waist, and feel her strong, soothing hands stroke his brow. He thought how happy he would be just to sit in the same room with her. Just to talk and to listen. To ask about her work and see the light come into her eyes as she told him about her day. To watch the expressions play across her face, to make her laugh. Christ, he'd even be happy to argue with her. About porridge or broccoli or any bloody thing.

  She was reading. He looked at his watch. It was nearly midnight, but she was still up working. He was about to tell his driver to take him back east, to the Alhambra, when his eyes fell on the box he'd brought with him. He grabbed it and got out of the carriage. jones, number 2 , the nameplate read. He rang the bell.

  A few minutes later India was at the door in a white nightgown and wrapper. Her blond curls hung loosely about her shoulders.

  "Sid? My goodness, this is a surprise."

  "The things you ordered came in," he said. "Sorry about the hour."

  "The things?"

  He cleared his throat. "Aye, luv. The things."

  The penny finally dropped. "Oh, rig
ht! Yes. The things. Thank you. It's awfully good of you to come all this way." She reached for the box.

  "It's heavy. I'll carry it up for you. No worries, I'll behave myself."

  She colored slightly. "Thank you."

  "For behaving myself?"

  "That, too."

  Sid followed India up the stairs and into her flat. Besides the bedroom, there was a tiny galley kitchen and a sitting room. Books dominated the place. They covered the desktop, the mantel, and the kitchen counter. They stood stacked on top of chairs and lay in heaps on the floor. Thick medical periodicals were piled near her desk. A teapot rested on top of them, along with the remains of a sandwich. On top of the desk, balanced precariously on yet more books, was a tarnished silver vase containing the room's only luxury--a dozen flawless winter-white roses just beginning to open.

  "Where should I put these?" Sid asked.

  "Oh, anywhere."

  He put the box by the hearth, then looked around. "Is this how you spend your Saturday nights?"

  India looked at the mess as if seeing it for the first time. "I've a sailor for a patient," she said. "It's malaria. At least, I think it's malaria. Could be dengue fever. I haven't seen enough cases of either to be positive so I have to read instead. A poor substitute for clinical experience, but better than nothing."

  There was a short silence, then Sid said, "Aye, well 'll be off, then."

  "Won't you stay for a minute? Let me get you a cup of tea. It's the least I can do after you came all this way."

  He hesitated, then said, "All right."

  She fetched her teapot off a pile of books and took it to the kitchen, glancing at him on the way. "Won't you sit?" she asked.

  "I'm trying to," he said, looking around for an empty place.

  She laughed. "Sorry. Push the books off the settee."

  He did so, settling himself while she heated some water. He held his hands up while her back was turned. They were still shaking. He balled them into fists to make them stop.

  "I can't thank you enough for those devices," she called over her shoulder.

  "It was nothing. Come to think of it, I should have brought them by Varden Street. Save you lugging them."

  "Good God, no! I'm going to sneak them in bit by bit. If Gifford saw the box, if he ever found out what I'm doing, I'd be finished."

  India brought the teapot, cups and saucers, and a plate of ginger biscuits and set them down on a low-legged table that Sid cleared for her. She poured him a cup, added milk at his request, and handed it to him.

  "You never told me what you are doing up and about at this hour," she said. "Surely not swotting up on malaria."

  "No."

  "Don't you ever sleep?"

  "Not if I can help it."

  She was looking at him closely now, with a worried expression. He looked away.

  "Sid, is something wrong?"

  He laughed. "Aye. Everything," he said, passing a shaky hand over his face.

  "Is it your side again?" she asked, alarmed. "Do you have any pain? Are you feverish?"

  "It's not me bloody side, India," he said. "It's you. I wish I'd never met you. You've wrecked everything. Wrecked me whole fucking life."

  She put her cup down, stricken.

  "You make me hate what I do. What I am," he said. "Who are you to do that to me? Everything I had--my family, my home, my future--was taken from me. The only way I could survive was by taking something back."

  She didn't answer, just looked at him, her gray eyes huge and wounded.

  "When I'm with you, I think of things and remember things and want things I long ago stopped wanting."

  "What things?" she asked, her voice barely a whisper.

  "Mad things. I want to wake up in a room by the sea. With sunlight streaming in the windows. The smell of salt on the wind. I don't even know where that place is. But I want to wake up there. With you."

  "Please, Sid. Please don't."

  "Why?" he nearly shouted. "Because I'm no good? Because I don't--"

  India cut him off angrily. "Because I'm engaged to be married!"

  Sid nodded. He stood, as if to go, then instead he bent to her, took her face in his hands, parted her lips with his tongue, and kissed her deeply. "A wedding gift," he said, when he'd finished. "Give me best to the groom."

  "You are very cruel," she said softly.

  He walked to the door.

  "Please, I don't want to lose... to lose your friendship. It means a great deal to me," India said.

  "Friendship? Is that what you call it?"

  India looked down at her hands. "Perhaps we can talk again when you're not so angry."

  "No, India, we can't. Because I don't want to see you again. Ever. You'll be the end of me, do you know that? Do you know what I did tonight? I left my girl all alone at a big do I'd thrown for her. Left every villain in the East End there, too. Men I shouldn't turn my back on for a second, never mind the whole night. I wrecked a whorehouse that earns me a lot of money. Scared the punters away. Doubt some of them will ever come back. I've made a right fucking mess of things, and it's all because of you."

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out her watch--the one she'd given him to pay for the rubber johnnies. He tossed it across the room to her. She caught it.

  India looked at it, then at him. "Why?" she asked. "Why are you giving this back? It was part of our deal. Payment."

  He didn't reply, just opened the door to leave.

  "Sid, why?" she pressed.

  He stopped and looked back at her. "Christ knows, India," he said. "I bloody well don't. I don't know anything anymore."

  Chapter 32

  Fiona Bristow stood quietly inside a squat brick warehouse on Whitechapel's Cheshire Street. She thought perhaps she should make her

  presence known, but the two women she'd come to see were in the midst of such a heated discussion with a third person, a man, that she was hesitant to interrupt.

  Dr. Jones was sketching a crude blueprint on the plank floor with a piece of chalk. She was kneeling, oblivious to dust and dirt. Her nurse, Ella Moskowitz, was kneeling beside her.

  "We'd need two plumbing stacks," Fiona heard the doctor say, "one on the north side of the building and one on the south in order to provide sufficient hot water to all floors--"

  "Wait. Stop," Ella said, scribbling furiously in a notebook. "Do you have any idea what that's going to cost?"

  "No."

  "A bloody fortune. In materials alone, never mind the labor."

  "Why now? Why this building, Indy?" the man cut in, looking at the rusted pipes snaking along the walls and the broken lights dangling from the ceiling. "It's in bad shape and it's small."

  "It's also cheap," the doctor replied. "Only five hundred pounds. We've enough money for a down payment, haven't we?"

  "Yes, but a down payment is only part of the equation," the man said. "You know that.You also need to make the mortgage payments every month, refurbish the building, and fit it out with all sorts of medical clobber."

  "But we could make a start. At least we'd have a building. We could refurbish it as we got more donations."

  "Yes, you could, but it's a totally muddled way of doing things," he said.

  "But Wish--"

  "India, what is going on with you? You drag me out of my flat and hurry me down here, and all to see some totally unsuitable building. Why are you suddenly in such a mad rush?"

  India sat back on her heels. "I can't stay at Dr. Gifford's anymore. I just can't."

  "But you're going to have to. You can't afford to leave. Not yet. What's going on there? What happened that has you so upset?"

  "We lost another patient today," Ella said quietly. "A new mother. Susan Brindle was her name. She was only nineteen years old."

  "I'm sorry to hear it, but I imagine that happens frequently in your line of work."

  "This woman died from puerperal fever," India said.

  "I don't know what that is," the man said.

&
nbsp; "Childbed fever. She shouldn't have. Contamination is almost entirely preventable--if the examining doctor washes his hands. She's the fifth mother we've lost in a fortnight to the disease. We lost two of their babies as well. It's a struggle for children without their mums. The fathers don't know what to do," Ella said.

  "Damn him," India suddenly said. "Damn him. Why can't he wash his bloody hands? It's such a simple thing. Its effectiveness has been proven again and again. By Semmelweiss. Pasteur. Lister. A few steps to a sink, a few seconds to scrub his hands. That's all it takes. All it takes to save a woman's life."