Little Bones

by Janette Jenkins

  Arthur lost the poker game. He lost the money in his wallet, his leather belt with the fancy steel buckle, and a small enamelled pillbox that had once belonged to his aunt. He could not believe his bad luck. The next day, the birthday party was cancelled. The landlord’s mother had run off with a drayman. For days Arthur had been practising ‘The Old Maid in the Garret’ and ‘Rose of Tralee’. He had promised the girls he would bring home a selection of party food wrapped in a handkerchief. He had imagined the weight of his pockets, loaded down with tips.

  ‘I told him that I’d sing anyway,’ Arthur told them. ‘But he was having none of it.’

  For days the girls watched their father pacing aimlessly around the room. He sat in the armchair circling his ankles – first one way, and then the other. He made intricate patterns with his nail clippings.

  Eventually, Ivy told her husband to get off his back side. Tavern-singing could not be classed as employment. It was pin money. And there was always the temptation of spending what few coins he did get at the bar.

  ‘You can do other things,’ she said.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘You’ve got two arms, haven’t you? You could sweep. Deliver coal. Pack boxes. There are a hundred jobs you could do. A thousand!’

  ‘But I like singing.’

  ‘And I like dancing a polka, but I have to serve coffee instead.’ Ivy, now in full throttle, told Arthur to take a leaf from their daughter’s book. Wasn’t he ashamed? Agnes busied herself with sewing and mending. Mrs Baylis had given her a blouse to alter. The woman in the haberdasher’s said she could put a card in her window for halfpence a week.

  ‘Even Jane makes herself useful,’ said Ivy. After cleaning the room, Jane sometimes ran errands for Miss Casey, the old spinster who lived above the meat shop. She posted her letters (mostly to a niece in Southampton), collected her groceries and arranged them inside her cupboards. Miss Casey had a frugal existence. From what Jane could gather, she lived on canned pilchards and brown bread and butter.

  ‘Well,’ sighed Ivy, pulling off her boots. ‘I’ll say this for you. At least you’re not a hard-hearted criminal, like those sitting downstairs.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Arthur. ‘Criminals?’

  Ivy raised her eyebrows. She folded her arms. ‘I have seen their brutish faces. The eager way they wait for the keys to be filed. You’re not telling me those ruffian friends of our landlord are simply gentlemen who are locked outside their homes?’

  ‘Burglars?’ said Arthur.

  ‘I’m saying nothing,’ said Ivy.

  Later, Arthur managed to rouse himself. Peeling off his shirt, he pressed a bar of wet soap across his upper body. He pulled a comb through his hair. Then he polished his boots.

  ‘Where are you off to, Pa?’ asked Agnes, looking up from her stitching.

  ‘I am going to venture into the nearest, and so far unexplored taverns,’ he told them. ‘And before you say a word, I am going into these busy establishments to show my face. To let them know I am a neighbour and on the lookout for employment.’

  ‘God give me strength,’ Ivy rolled her eyes.

  Arthur returned at twenty past midnight with money in his pocket, a scrappy piece of paper, and a tin that had once held Pontefract cakes. Ivy and Agnes were sleeping but Jane had seen her father trying to hide the tin behind the linen basket. As soon as he fell asleep (and he was out for the count in less than five minutes), she had found it. The tin was wrapped in a crushed grey stocking. The scrappy piece of paper was stuffed inside the toe. She read it. 77 Pilkington Terrace. Ivan Young (Travel Consultant) 6 Poole Road. 43 Southwark Bridge Road. She shook the tin. There was something inside, but the lid had rusted and she couldn’t prise it open. It rattled. Small liquorice cakes didn’t rattle.

  The tin was never mentioned. Arthur explained he had let it be known in the Coach and Horses, the Black Knight and the King’s Arms that he was available and looking for any kind of work. He was going to see a man that afternoon. The man had a junk yard, and though slightly inebriated when they talked, he had expressed an interest in hiring someone who could collect the junk, or even seek it out.

  ‘You mean from poor grieving widows and the like?’ said Agnes.

  ‘I can see you with junk,’ Ivy told him.

  Three hours later, Arthur returned to the room with a large bottle of gin. The junk man was brainless. A cheat. He had made out that Arthur was a stranger when only the previous night he had stood him three drinks.

  ‘I wouldn’t work for that po-faced liar if he begged me,’ he said, pulling the cork from the bottle.

  ‘So what now?’ said Ivy.

  ‘Don’t you worry, my sweet,’ he said, tapping the side of his nose. ‘I have other things up my sleeve.’

  Leaving the grocer’s (more pilchards), Jane saw her father shaking his head and laughing with the locksmith. It was the beginning of winter and pools of sooty leaves were clinging to the pavement. When her father bent to remove a particularly irksome piece of foliage from his trousers, Jane could see something shifting in his hand. It was the tin he had hidden in the stocking. By now, the locksmith was patting Arthur’s elbow and leading him into the shop. The door closed behind them with a clang.

  With her basket over her arm, Jane walked towards the locksmith’s. The shop was crammed with open safes, giant keys and other metal objects. Squinting, she tried to see through the shadows, squealing when a thin white cat darted from the open doors of a cabinet. Jane moved away. She couldn’t see her father and Miss Casey would be waiting for her fish.

  Her father didn’t come home that night. It wasn’t unusual. Ivy seemed happy enough with the remains of the gin bottle. When he didn’t come home for the rest of the week, Ivy started moaning, drinking, saying she couldn’t face working at the coffee house, she wasn’t fit, she had all sorts of things on her mind. She sent Agnes with a note, explaining she was sick.

  ‘He’s always been useless,’ Ivy slurred. ‘And now he’s worse than useless.’

  At the back of the building Jane found her father. He was ashen-faced, sitting hunched on the steps. She could smell whisky on his breath.

  ‘We’ve been worried,’ she told him.

  Arthur closed his eyes. His head fell forwards. ‘I’ve had the most terrible time,’ he said.

  ‘Have you been in a fight?’ she asked.

  He opened his eyes. Looked up. ‘If only that were it,’ he said. ‘A fight.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  Arthur folded his arms around himself. He shook his matted head. ‘I’ve done a terrible thing.’

  ‘You’ve not killed someone, have you?’

  ‘Of course I haven’t. What do you take me for, a murderer?’

  Relieved, Jane sat on the next step down. She could hear her father breathing. A wheezing in his chest.

  ‘I need a drink,’ he said.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Jane. ‘Tell me what you’ve done.’

  ‘No. You’re only eleven.’

  ‘I’m thirteen.’

  ‘Still.’

  She sat looking at her father. How had he got into such a sorry state? On other occasions, she had seen him with bruises on his cheeks, cuts on his knees, and his clothes almost ragged. Now he looked haunted. Empty.

  ‘Is it something to do with a tin?’ asked Jane.

  His head sprang up. ‘What do you know about it?’

  ‘Nothing. I saw you hiding it, that’s all.’

  Sighing, he reached inside his pocket and brought out the green and gold tin.

  ‘I couldn’t get the lid open,’ Jane told him. ‘I tried, but I didn’t have the strength.’

  With one flick of his thumb, Arthur lifted the lid. He handed it to her. Inside the tin was a small block of soap.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Jane.

  ‘Turn it over.’

  On the other side was an impression of a key. Arthur told Jane that in one of the taverns, and for the life of him he couldn’t
remember which, he had got talking to a character who called himself Slip. Slip had been very interested to hear that Arthur was living above a locksmith’s. And not just any locksmith’s! Arthur was living above the locksmith’s belonging to Mr Dan Baylis, who happened to be an old friend of Slip’s, a friend who could be relied upon when it came down to business.

  ‘What sort of business?’ asked Jane.

  ‘Housebreaking. What sort do you think?’

  ‘So you’ve been burgling people’s houses?’ she said.

  Arthur looked sheepish. ‘I tried.’

  Slip had given him a few addresses. The people who lived in these houses were known to be away. He had given him the impression of a key. Mr Baylis had taken this soap impression and he had asked no questions – though Arthur had muddled on, prattling, saying his old grandmother was bedridden and they needed another key for the house, only she didn’t like to be left without one, and so on.

  ‘What happened?’ said Jane. ‘Were you caught?’

  Arthur shook his head. He had gone to the house in Pilkington Terrace. It had been a very dark night, and as luck would have it, the street lamps weren’t lit. He had managed to grope his way around the back. The wall was easy enough to manage. Then he had slipped the key into the lock – it was a little stiff, but it had opened eventually, and Arthur stepped inside. ‘Of course my heart was jumping into my mouth,’ he said. ‘I was terrified.’

  The kitchen was very bare, though in the darkness he had managed to knock over what might have been a milk jug and some other clattering things. Arthur, his knees shaking, had found a lamp and some matches. He stopped for a moment. Nothing moved. All he could hear was the ticking of a clock.

  Slip had given him instructions. He was to take a bag, a smallish bag – because as Slip had told him, he was only to take the best quality items, and those items were usually the smallest. He had to look for heavy candlesticks. Jewellery. Ornaments. Valuable things.

  On tiptoe he had made his way down the hall. In the parlour he found the candlesticks were made of glazed pottery and no good at all. There was a ship in a bottle on the mantelpiece, and in the flickering lamplight it looked as if it were bobbing on the waves. Arthur had watched it for a moment, fascinated, then he had pushed it into his bag, thinking even if it wasn’t valuable enough for Slip, he would keep it anyway. In the hall, he found a pretty brass box and picture frame.

  ‘Then I went upstairs,’ he said.

  The stairs had creaked and he had stopped halfway, his nerves already in tatters. On the landing a small table held a few old books and an oriental-looking vase, dozens of which Arthur had seen selling for pennies on the Saturday street market. He pushed at a door. It was a bedroom with a narrow single bed. The bed had been stripped, there was a chamber pot sitting on the mattress, the fireplace was empty.

  ‘There was another room on the landing,’ he said. ‘I pushed the door open with my boot. I stepped inside and then I dropped the lamp.’

  He stopped.

  ‘What is it, Pa?’ asked Jane. ‘Did the lamp catch fire?’

  ‘No.’ Arthur took a few deep breaths. ‘I picked it up. Looked around. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The room was a shrine. It was full of flowers. Lilies. Mostly lilies. In the middle of these lilies were two portraits. Children. Girls in sailor dresses. Black satin ribbons had been tied around the frames. The air was sweet. It was sickening. And the girls …’ He faltered. ‘The girls had eyes like you and Agnes. They followed me round the room. I could feel it. I think it was a sign. I left the bag and fled. I’ve been in the pub ever since. Though I stayed at Georgie’s one night. You remember Georgie? The boxer?’

  Jane shook her head. She put her hand on her father’s knee. She could feel it trembling. ‘It would have been the light. I’m here, aren’t I? I’m alive.’

  ‘Is there any gin left?’ he said. ‘Or has your mother finished it off?’

  At home, Arthur told his wife the whole sorry story. He couldn’t help himself.

  ‘Why housebreaking?’ said Ivy.

  ‘What can I say? I was tempted.’

  A bottle was bought from the nearest gin shop. Arthur told them about Slip. Slip would be looking for him. He was the one who had pressed the key into the soap. And now he was waiting for his share of the loot.

  ‘He is not a nice man,’ said Arthur. ‘And he knows people.’

  Agnes frowned. ‘So you’re in hiding again? I remember the man with the salmon face.’

  ‘Salmon Face was harmless. Slip is something else.’

  Arthur took more and more to drink. If he wasn’t worrying about Slip, he was thinking of the shrine. He saw it as a curse. He started praying every night. And of course, Slip knew where Arthur lived. He knew where to find him.

  ‘No!’ said Ivy. ‘I don’t care what happens. We are not removing again.’

  Arthur spent more nights away. He thought about finding Slip. Of owning up. But time passed. It was too late. When he was feeling optimistic, Arthur thought Slip must have forgotten all about him. ‘He would have been here by now,’ he’d say. ‘Wouldn’t he?’

  Christmas came. After his dismal attempt at finding their festive duck, Ivy kicked Arthur out for a couple of days. He came back with half a dozen tins of mock turtle soup and a lawn tennis racquet. ‘Useful,’ said Ivy.

  On New Year’s Eve Arthur slipped out for a celebratory drink. He didn’t come back until Valentine’s Day. When he left again, Ivy said she’d had enough of his shenanigans, and as the rent was very high, they might have to think about removing after all. ‘A girl at the coffee house has told me about a place above an offal yard,’ she said.

  ‘Offal?’ Agnes looked horrified.

  ‘What’s wrong with offal?’ said Ivy. ‘You like a piece of heart now and then.’

  ‘I like a piece of heart, but I don’t want to live where it came from.’

  Nine

  The Sky is a

  Dangerous Thing

  WHEN JANE OPENED the door, the sergeant smiled at her. ‘Excellent. You are at home receiving visitors. Might I step inside?’

  The sergeant was a wide, sinewy, bulldog of a man, with very small black eyes. Jane could feel herself fraying. Her hands (which she quickly pulled behind her back) were trembling. For a split second, she wondered if the sergeant could see her nerves, or was this how everyone appeared in his presence?

  ‘Is your master at home?’ he asked. ‘Or his good lady wife?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Excellent. Then I will meet with them in their parlour.’

  Stepping through the door, he removed his helmet and Jane could see the dent it had made in his forehead, his bristly hair, ink black, and his nose that might have been broken. Reluctantly, she showed him into the parlour, where he refused a seat. Instead, he walked around the room, lifting the little shepherdess and examining the postcard of Miss Langtry. ‘Ah, what a woman,’ he said.

  Making her way up the stairs, Jane felt like she was both tripping and flying, she could not get there fast enough, and she pushed the bedroom door without thinking, calling or knocking. Mrs Swift was stepping into her petticoat. The doctor was sitting on the bed, his arms folded, watching her. ‘What in God’s name—’ He turned.

  ‘Sir,’ she said, holding onto her heaving ribcage. ‘There’s a policeman downstairs and he’s waiting to see you both.’

  Mrs Swift, bulging out of her whalebones, let her petticoat fall to the floor. She looked stricken.

  The doctor shook his head. ‘No, no, no,’ he said. ‘Not today. I’m not ready. I simply couldn’t face it. It’s Sunday. Sunday! You let the man inside on God’s day of rest?’

  ‘He made me, sir.’

  Mrs Swift started blubbing as the doctor reached for his collar and the little box of studs. ‘Pull yourself together, woman,’ he snarled, the studs now jumping like ants in his hand. ‘You can’t let him see you like this, you have guilt written over your face.’

  ‘Guilt? What guil
t? I have done nothing wrong.’

  ‘Get dressed quickly. We will go downstairs together and you will act the proper doctor’s wife. Everything will be all right. If he was going to arrest us, he would have done it by now.’

  ‘Arrest us?’ said Mrs Swift, sobbing. ‘I think I’m going to die.’

  The doctor turned to face Jane and forced a very thin smile. ‘Go downstairs at once. Tell the policeman—’

  ‘He’s a sergeant, sir.’

  ‘Tell the sergeant we are dressing in haste. We will be with him as soon as we can. Offer him tea. Don’t look too frightened. Frightened begs questions. We will co-operate. Lie if we have to. And we will treat this sergeant, this man of the law, with the utmost of respect.’

  The sergeant seemed quite at home in the little parlour, though he did look very large. After flicking through a week-old copy of the Stage, he finally took a seat on the small sagging sofa. He accepted a cup of tea without milk, saying his stomach couldn’t take it. In the kitchen, waiting for the water to boil, Jane wished Edie and Alice were with her. Why had Dr Swift stopped them coming on a Sunday?

  When Jane brought the sergeant his tea, forgetting to use the best tray, though he didn’t seem to mind the old one with its cracks, he asked for her name, and if she worked for the doctor in particular. When she told him that she did, he said in that case she should remain inside the room while they had their little discussion.

  Finally, the doctor and his wife entered in a cloud of cologne and whisky-masking peppermints. The sergeant stood to greet them, extending his hand, smiling, as if this were a rather pleasant social call.

  ‘Sergeant Morrell.’

  ‘Sir,’ said the doctor. ‘How might we help you?’

  ‘First of all,’ he said, ‘I would like to bring my constable inside, and he will record our conversation in his notebook.’

  ‘Oh my goodness,’ exclaimed Mrs Swift.

  The sergeant smiled. ‘It is common practice, ma’am, avoiding discrepancies. It will serve as an accurate reminder.’

  The constable, shivering from the brisk September wind, came into the parlour with his notebook in his hands. He was a snivelling, wiry specimen, who sat like a desk clerk on the lookout for promotion.