Little Bones

by Janette Jenkins

  That night Jane added Martha Bell to her prayers, saying them quickly, because her knees were sore from walking and the air felt very cold. In her pocket the paperweight was frozen, and she breathed on it before pushing it under the mattress. She would spend ten minutes looking out of the window for Agnes. No more than that. It was late. The clock was chiming midnight.

  ‘Where is he?’ said Miss Bell. ‘Where is the doctor?’

  ‘At a lodging house, miss. The Good Fairy Cockleshell in Robinson Crusoe has been taken very badly.’

  ‘And how long will Swift be with this mollusc?’

  ‘It was an emergency, miss. He’ll be here as soon as he can.’

  When Miss Bell had settled with a cup of tea, three ginger biscuits and a dog-eared novelette, Jane tried to stir the smoky fire into some kind of life. Gently lifting the edge of the curtain, she looked to see if there was any sign of the doctor, but the street was almost empty, and the lamps were being lit. It was just past six o’clock.

  Jane knew the house belonged to a woman called Miss Silverwood – the patients paid Miss Silverwood, who then paid the doctor. The serving girl Nell told her this. Nell said the women paid a small fortune, though she wondered where the money went, because there was never enough coal, and the butcher wanted paying.

  When the doctor eventually arrived, he was stumbling a little, spouting apologies, bringing the damp inside and the scent of his cigar.

  ‘I have heard such horror stories,’ said Miss Bell. ‘Do you use knitting needles doused in bleach? Or a syringe perhaps? Carbolic?’

  ‘I am a physician, not a butcher,’ he said, placing his smouldering cigar on the lip of a saucer, warming his hands, then pressing so hard on her navel he left the pale ghostly imprint of his fingers on her skin. ‘I will administer the tincture, I will palpate the area. It might take several hours for the obstruction to remove itself.’

  After comparing his watch to the mantel clock, the doctor left Jane with the tincture and the patient. ‘Send for me when the trouble starts,’ he told her. ‘I will run if I have to.’

  While Miss Bell slept, Jane cleaned the small tincture spoon over and over again on the hem of her apron. She picked crumbs from the carpet. She sat by the fire, feeling the heat pressing onto her legs.

  When Miss Bell finally woke, she asked Jane to walk around the room with her, saying walking might help to ease the pain.

  ‘At this moment I am willing to try anything.’

  Jane took the hand she was offered. It felt very light and warm. Chatting to distract herself, the actress talked of touring and the music halls, having a preference for Manchester, where the crowds were so eager and jolly, whatever the price of their seats.

  ‘Do you know Charlie Chat?’ asked Jane.

  ‘Does he wear very large shoes? Or is he the balladeer with the mouse in his pocket?’

  Jane couldn’t help feeling disappointed. She wondered if Miss Bell knew any other famous people, like Jimmy Jinx, the rubber-necked clown, or the girl who pulled pennies from her throat.

  ‘I loved him you know.’

  ‘Yes, miss?’

  ‘I loved him like I was sick.’

  It was in the early hours of the morning when the doctor eventually returned, wiping globs of frozen sleep from his eyes, shirt-tails flapping, a bootlace trailing behind him. By now Miss Bell was in agony, her face dripping sweat as she sank onto her knees.

  ‘I’m dying,’ she moaned. ‘Can’t you see I’m dying?’

  Jane felt afraid, grinding her teeth as the doctor breathed deeply, rubbing the back of his neck. ‘We must get you onto the bed,’ he said. ‘Jane, if you could take one arm, I will take the other.’

  Of course it was a struggle, a lopsided lurch to the bed, Miss Bell’s legs giving way at every small step, and then Jane’s, until eventually Miss Bell fell hard across the mattress. ‘I can’t stand the pain,’ she said. ‘Give me something.’

  The doctor, slowly loosening his collar, fished inside his bag, but it seemed there were no more tinctures or powders, and instead he listened carefully to Miss Bell’s erratic heartbeat.

  ‘It is all well and good,’ he said. ‘All well and good.’

  Twenty minutes later the obstruction was removed. Doctor Swift wrapped it in newspaper, which for now he pushed beneath the bed, where it sat between a teacup and a blue satin slipper.

  It didn’t take long for Jane to understand that Dr Swift had a single field of expertise. He was run off his feet with it! Sometimes, he would have to turn girls down, or he would pass them on to a woman in Highgate, the enterprising wife of a horse-breeder.

  Jane would be called from her attic at all hours, and, dressing in a hurry, would face an early gloom, a stabbing, icy wind, or a hard, pressing rain. Standing tense with the cold, she uncorked bottles of a bitter brown tincture, held spoons, damp rags and even damper hands.

  Stifling yawns, Jane found it hard to imagine these inconvenienced showgirls on a stage, shining in the brilliance of the limelights. Oh, she knew they were not at their best, God help them, but weren’t they supposed to be pretty? She tried to picture them in greasepaint, frilly dresses and fine dancing shoes, but it was hard, usually impossible. Whenever she and Agnes had scraped together enough for a couple of tickets, the girls they had swooned over had cherry-red lips and shiny ringlets, dainty steps and smiles. Their favourite was Vesta Victoria, whose daddy wouldn’t buy her a bow-wow, and whose light-as-a-feather dancing girls had careered across the stage like illustrations for Jersey cream, Virginia cigarettes or bars of chamomile soap.

  ‘I have my picture on a postcard,’ one of the girls told her. ‘I think it’s in my bag.’

  And as the girl gripped onto the shredded, filthy ends of the bed-sheets, Jane could not help but marvel at the card and the glossy lithe creature in pretty pantaloons, smiling, waving jauntily at the camera.

  ‘Is the work too hard?’ the doctor asked one night as they made their way home in the dark.

  ‘No, sir.’ And it was true, she told herself, the work was nothing compared to the long heavy hours of the market girls, scullery maids or those lantern-jawed waifs making matches. Sometimes, Jane would sit for hours at a bedside, listening to the chatter of the girls, drinking cups of pale tea, and some might call it luxury.

  ‘You must think of these obstructions as tumours,’ the doctor told her. ‘Life-threatening tumours that need to be removed.’

  And though Jane had nodded, she wanted to tell him that it was not the obstructions that bothered her, but the girls themselves, the way they cried out for their mothers, sisters, or the men they both loved and abhorred. Their eyes when the tincture took hold. Their fingers gripping hard into the mattress.

  *

  December arrived. Wide dark clouds fell across the rooftops, the snow bruised quickly and ice formed inside and out. Yet December also brought the prospect of Christmas, delighting Mrs Swift, a woman now counting down the days, oblivious to the freezing wind and frost, mottling her ankles by the fireside, her lap spilling with lists and elaborate festive menus.

  ‘A goose,’ she was saying. ‘I cannot abide turkey, the meat is so tasteless and dry. What would you say to a goose? A great fat goose for Christmas Day?’

  ‘I would say very good, ma’am,’ said Jane, swallowing another yawn, along with the urge to say ‘boo’.

  Mrs Swift sucked on the end of her pencil as if it was giving her nourishment. ‘Sage and onion stuffing, a jellied ham, curried cod loins, moulded cream, and of course figgy pudding. The doctor is especially fond of figgy pudding.’

  Jane could feel her stomach creaking. Moments before, Mrs Swift had been extolling the virtues of tropical fruit, having read in a pamphlet that pineapple alone could cure both gout and constipation. Would Edie, the Swifts’ maid-of-all-work, have time to prepare these seasonal delicacies? Jane often wondered why the Swifts didn’t employ more servants, or at least one who lived with them. Edie, a square-faced girl with frizzy brown hair,
from Holborn, and Alice, a short wiry girl from the back of Seven Dials, worked the house between them, and it showed. The dust settled quickly, grease clung to all the crockery, and the mirrors were so badly in need of a polish you might think that you were vanishing. Mrs Swift rarely complained, only sighing now and then, huffing over the dried egg yolk still sitting on her dinner plate, and narrowing her eyes before scraping it off with a thumbnail.

  After mutterings about the unreliable wine merchant, and ordering a stilton, Jane was sent to collect a package of delicate laundry from the wash-house on Pole Street, these delicates being Mrs Swift’s lace-wear. Though she had never travelled abroad, where the climate and the spices wouldn’t suit her, and all the pieces bought in Broadstairs, Mrs Swift had been told by the proprietress that the lace was Flemish, and of the very highest quality.

  Jane was glad to be out of the house, walking down the narrow back lane where Mr Reginald Wolfe offered Photographic Portraits Surpassed by None. Pinned on a large felt board, the faces staring out of the photographs looked surprised, boys in caps and stiff white collars, girls with mechanical songbirds, a dark-skinned man with his eyes half closed.

  The shops were full of geese hanging from their ankles, the market stuffed with a pungent forest of firs, holly and the twisted boughs of mistletoe that set the costers laughing. As had become her habit, Jane looked at the sky, hoping for something to catch, the only thing she had managed to hold onto so far being a large peacock feather that had flown from a poor woman’s hat.

  At the wash-house, its doorstep running with suds, a red-faced dumpling of a laundress appeared flustered at the order slip. Grunting, the woman disappeared and Jane stood reading the blackboard, with its price list and services, the chalk marks blooming like roses in a hot house. Suddenly, the door at the back flew open and the woman stood grim-faced, a small floppy package sitting in her hands, a drip running slowly around the soft sweaty contours of her face.

  ‘Here,’ she said, thrusting the package at Jane. ‘She boiled it. No charge.’

  The package, with its loosely knotted string, felt like a damp empty envelope. ‘Is the lace all right?’ Jane asked.

  The woman gave an unconcerned shrug. ‘It’s lace,’ she said, ‘but it’s smaller.’

  The cold air was biting and Jane could already see Mrs Swift turning scarlet and throwing up her hands. Feeling sick, she walked the long way back. She watched the groups of children with their mothers staring intently into Swann’s Emporium, which was glittering and already full of fancy Christmas lights. The French apothecary stood outside his shop, carefully waxing his dark moustache. Jane liked the Frenchman. She liked the way he did these small private things in public places.

  ‘Hey, cripple!’ The boy with PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD tied across his shoulders leant against a wall. ‘How you doing, cripple?’

  ‘Well enough,’ she said. ‘And how is your preacher?’

  ‘Sozzled.’

  ‘I am very glad to hear it, for your sake, because if he wasn’t so fond of a drink then you would be out of a job.’

  ‘You talk very grand for a nobody.’

  ‘I was taught very well by a priest,’ she said, quickly stepping from the pavement and hurrying on her way.

  Mrs Swift hadn’t stirred from her armchair, though the room was cold and the fire had burned to a smoulder. Jane’s mouth felt dry. She wondered if her voice might be lost inside the thin dark cave of her throat.

  ‘I am very sorry, ma’am, the lace, ma’am, they boiled it.’

  ‘They what?’ Mrs Swift snatched up the package, then started fussing around for some scissors, cutting through the string with some difficulty, only adding to the suspense and Jane’s extreme discomfort. Mrs Swift started mumbling a mild stream of curses as the paper unfolded and she was looking down at an intricate lace chemise that would fit very snugly on a doll. ‘What the …?’ Mrs Swift paled, frowned, then she grinned, wholeheartedly it seemed, laughing as she held a tiny pair of drawers, fingers kicking like a plump pair of legs. Jane was more than a little bemused. She did not think it fitting for a doctor’s wife, a lady, to be playing with her underthings.

  ‘Can you not see the amusement in it?’ Mrs Swift laughed, a few shiny tears bouncing down her cheeks. ‘The size of me? The size of these bitty garments?’

  Eventually, Jane allowed herself a smile, because whatever Mrs Swift was doing, it was better than being chastised.

  ‘I will not make a fuss,’ she said, managing to compose herself. ‘You are not in any trouble, and neither is the wash-house. Sit yourself down, and while the doctor rests, we can go through my Christmas list again, as I see we have nothing set down for the breakfast.’

  *

  Jane wrote a letter in her head.

  Dearest Agnes,

  Things have changed. I am still at the house. Mrs Swift has become very friendly and kind-hearted. She has given me a chance. If you came back she would welcome you and not mention the debt at all. It is almost Christmas Day. I can’t imagine Christmas Day without you or Ma, and though Pa was once on his travels, he was back by Boxing Day, with a big jar of mincemeat and a shivering canary.

  Are you keeping well? Do you have a place to stay? You never liked the cold. If you came back I could give you the gloves I found in Ma’s pigskin bag. They do smell of the bag, and there’s a small hole in the left-hand thumb, but they’re thick enough and grey, so they don’t show the dirt.

  Come back to me, Agnes. Just for half an hour? I have a little money – the girls I work with sometimes press it into my hand – and I will buy you a magazine, with the romantic stories you like, and all the latest fashion plates.

  Keep warm. Keep safe.

  I miss you.

  Your loving sister,

  Jane

  *

  The girl called Annie, who until last week had been playing Snowflake/Winter Nymph at the Theatre Royal, talked about Christmas Day in Halifax, where her sisters woke at dawn, coming down for breakfast in new ribbons, their lips sticky with orange juice, the altar at St John’s so pretty with evergreens, and the folks so good-humoured it was hardly like being inside a church at all. And then there’d be the feast: the chicken, friends sitting by the hearth, the lines of paper angels dancing in the windows.

  ‘Oh, how I shall miss it,’ she said, between vomiting into a bucket. ‘My grandpa told me London was a wicked, heathen place, and I should have sat right down and listened, only I was too busy packing my dancing shoes and dreaming of the good life.’

  Jane held back her hair and murmured sympathetically, but if truth be told the girl was getting on her nerves, whining and moaning as if it were all London’s fault she had succumbed to the urges of the flyman, who had helped with her homesickness, what with him coming from the North (albeit Stoke-on-Trent), as well as everything else.

  ‘And I didn’t really like him,’ the girl whimpered. ‘He had big scratchy hands and most of his teeth were rotten.’

  Jane held the stinking bucket, looking out of the window, watching the white world turning grey. The street was darkening. She could hear the doctor pacing the landing, rattling the pages the girl had thought were her notes but were actually the back pages of the Penny Pictorial. The girl was in the chorus, back end. Her bill would be paid in weekly instalments, and as these payments were often tenuous, the girl didn’t qualify for any particular niceties or extra bedside care; indeed, when Jane had given her a spoonful of the tincture and the doctor had pressed so hard on her abdomen that the girl had all but fainted, they left her to get on with it, and even Jane was glad to close the door on that vomit and yuletide nostalgia.

  On the street it looked like everyone was crying. Ice hung in daggers from the guttering. Boys with their hands thrust deep inside their pockets sometimes tried a slide on the black icy pavements. Jane’s fingers were stiff, her bent joints throbbing as they passed people working in the warmth, girls salting soup, serving tea, wiping steamy windows. The doctor wore a claret-c
oloured scarf; Jane’s own neck, now stiff with the cold and the effort of keeping her head in place, sank even lower, so her red frozen chin fell scraping into her collar.

  ‘Keep up, keep up.’ The doctor strode ahead, leaving a trail of white breath as the fog rolled in from the half-frozen river behind them. Gritting her teeth, Jane managed to thrust herself forwards, her feet numb, the doctor’s sleeve brushing the side of her face as they eventually arrived at a lodging house in Slingsby Place, the air already so dense Jane could barely see in front of her.

  The house was black, the windows set crooked in the thick grimy walls. Inside, a gas jet flickered in the hall and a fine coil of mist curled slowly towards the ceiling. The doctor announced his presence and a woman appeared, slightly hunchbacked, eyes squinting, her slippered feet shuffling over the dipping oilcloth tiles.

  ‘I sent a note two hours since,’ the woman said. ‘You’re at least an hour too late.’

  ‘Is the girl in pain?’

  ‘The girl has gone and snuffed it, dead for an hour, before that crying for her mother, and a girl called Elsie, though it might have been Lizzie, there was such a croak in her voice and my ears were never up to much listening.’

  The doctor took off his hat. ‘You should have written the word “Urgent”. Still,’ he sighed, ‘it’s too late now. I had better take a look at her.’

  Walking up the steep bare steps, the smell of coal and stewed cabbage hanging in the air, the tendrils of fog floating over their shoulders, Jane forgot the cold, the way her icy fingers had curled into her hands. The doctor went in first, with Jane moving slowly behind him, placing one foot in front of the other, like a novice walking a tightrope.

  The room was dark, the drapes closed, a few cheap candles sat guttering on saucers, throwing fine grey shadows on the cracked distempered walls. The doctor leant over the bed, shaking his head, not it seemed out of sympathy, but with a quiet exasperation.

  ‘Her family will never know of this tragedy,’ he said. ‘They will be sitting in their parlour, in Birmingham or Glasgow or wherever this poor girl came from, shaking their heads over the folly of their daughter, yet imagining her frolicking over the stage, dancing and singing with the best of them.’