by Y. S. Lee
Mary shrugged. “Sometimes I stay with friends.”
Winnie nodded. She was staring at Mary again, in that fixed way of hers, and showed no signs of leaving.
Mary began to pull on her boots. Apparently, any sort of wash would have to wait.
“Where?”
“What d’you mean, ‘Where’?”
Winnie’s gaze was fixed on the floor, which she mopped with careful, vigorous strokes. “Where do your friends live? Limehouse? Poplar?”
It was hardly a subtle approach; everyone knew that east London had significant south Asian and south-east Asian populations. Mary had spent all week dreading this moment. But now that Winnie had finally found the courage to ask, however clumsily, it seemed foolish to dissemble. “No,” she said. “In St John’s Wood.” Winnie’s expression – what she could see of it – was carefully still. “They’re not Chinese, although my father was.”
Winnie’s head snapped up, delight stretching her normally downturned features into an eager smile. A rapid-fire string of questions, all in Cantonese, poured from her lips.
This was the bit Mary hated, and no small part of the reason she always dodged questions about her race. “I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t understand you.”
Winnie’s mouth fell open in an expression of dismay so foolish it was difficult not to smile. “You don’t understand your own language?”
“No,” said Mary firmly. She had no intention of entering into explanation or apology.
“But your father – he did not teach you?”
“He’s dead.”
“And your mother…?”
“Dead. And a gwei lo.” That was about all the Cantonese she knew. And she’d got the inflection wrong.
“Ohhh…”
The pity in Winnie’s voice was both moving and irksome, and Mary was glad for a reason to leave. She shrugged on her jacket and said, “I mayn’t be back tonight.” The last thing she wanted was Winnie creating an opportunity to question her further.
She stalked from the lodging-house in a bitter mood. People were so damned nosy, so obsessively intent on categorizing and classifying. She would for ever be plagued by that question or variations thereon, and there would never be a satisfactory way to answer. If she was untruthful, it was a denial of her blood. If she met the question directly, she became an object of pity or a lesser species; a mongrel. The only reasonable solution was to do the very thing she’d done for years: keep her head down, often literally, and avoid the issue entirely.
For the thousandth time, she wondered what her father would have done. He’d been a brave man, a clever man, highly regarded in their little community. Mary had learned, just the previous year, that he’d perished trying to uncover the truth. Ironically, he was so lost she didn’t even know what about. But when she’d made that limited, all-transforming discovery, it had affirmed her resolve to work for the Agency.
To uncover truths.
To serve the truth.
To live a life worthy of her father’s approval.
The jade pendant he’d left for her – the only thing that had survived the fire at the Lascars’ refuge, and her sole memento of childhood – was curled safely in a drawer at the Academy. It was her most precious belonging. There still remained the problem of how to reconcile that pendant, a talisman of her Chinese heritage, with her equally powerful desire to bury entirely the question of her race. But she would have time enough to think of that once she was Mary, just Mary, again.
Seventeen
Palace yard, Westminster
It was an odd, sluggish, unbalanced sort of morning, with heavy air pressure and little prospect of that much-needed storm. Keenan didn’t turn up for work at all, to general puzzlement and Reid’s poorly disguised relief. It was less certain how Harkness viewed this absence. He ought to be livid; demand an explanation; discipline such a sloppy foreman. But nothing in Harkness’s treatment of Keenan so far made this likely. If anything, Harkness seemed to avoid looking in the brickies’ direction altogether, in order to avoid the fact of Keenan’s absence.
The site engineer seemed to have had a bad night: he was waxy of complexion and the half-moons beneath his eyes were a deep purple, rather than the usual greeny-grey. He had a habit of rubbing his fingers through his beard when anxious, and today there were times when he appeared to be grooming himself like an ape, so frequently did he rake the hair on his chin. And there was the nervous twitch. Always that twitch. Certainly, Harkness was suffering. But the untimely death of one unpopular worker would never explain the extent of his anxiety. No: his concerns were clearly much larger than any sort of petty crime or disciplinary problem on site.
The new Houses of Parliament were notoriously unlucky. One of its designers, the brilliant A. W. N. Pugin, had died some seven years before and its architect, Sir Charles Barry, was said to be unwell, made ill by the strain of working on the Palace. Now, with blame being redirected towards the site engineer, Harkness certainly had cause to look and feel unwell. A building twenty-five years behind schedule; a budget swollen to several times its original estimate; a dead bricklayer; and a safety review that might implicate him as the man responsible for these problems. Taken together, Harkness’s difficulties made the Eye on London’s fanciful “curse of the clock tower” seem almost rational.
Mary was among the last of the labourers to depart Palace Yard at the dinner hour. She’d been working steadily with James, making notes, taking measurements, generally being a good little errand boy. Now, as she trailed the narrow file of men through the entrance gate, her attention was snagged by a distinct change in Reid’s posture. This morning, he’d been tense and reluctant. When Keenan hadn’t appeared, he’d turned watchful and wary. Now, though, he was alert and purposeful, moving with an athlete’s deliberate grace towards the site entrance. And from the expression on his face, he wasn’t thinking about his dinner.
He was so preoccupied that he left without cleaning his hands. Reid’s careful hand-washing was the subject of some chivvying from others, and was something about which he was particular. Each day, before dinner and before going home, he splashed his hands and forearms liberally with water from the rain barrel and dried them carefully on a threadbare towel hanging from a rusty nail. But today he glanced neither at the rain barrel nor at the two hod-carriers with whom he normally ate.
Mary followed him to a busy coffee-shop across Parliament Square from which wafted an intense aroma of hot pastry. Inside, twenty-five or thirty men were wedged into a space intended for half that number. They seemed content with their lot nevertheless, tucking into enormous platefuls of food: pie and peas, pie and potatoes, pie and pie… Her stomach rumbled fiercely.
She slowed her pace just outside the shop. Its open windows vibrated with boisterous conversation and sharp barks of laughter, these deeper sounds ornamented with the bright clatter of forks. Among this relaxed bunch, Reid’s single-minded intent was only too evident as he picked his way through the crush of bodies, promptly disappearing from view.
Mary prepared to wait. She crossed the street and bought her dinner from the outdoor stall that looked nearest to clean: a hot potato, still in its jacket. There was nowhere to sit, of course, but she didn’t mind. She quite liked to lean against lampposts, lounge on walls – manners severely discouraged in young ladies, but essential to street urchins. The dinner hour was at its peak, now, with working men and women dining according to their budgets. Those with the most money went to coffee-shops like the one Reid had gone into, where one could sit down to a hot cooked meal. Public houses appealed to those who preferred to drink their sustenance, downing a few pints of ale with, perhaps, covert bites of a smuggled-in slab of bread-and-butter. There were also the bakeshops, which sold pies and other savouries to be eaten elsewhere – “elsewhere” meaning the street. Cheapest of all were the street vendors, like Mary’s potato-woman, with her tumbledown stall and hoarse cry of “’Ot-pitaaaaaaytoes, nice ‘n’ ’ot!”.
One could buy slabby boiled puddings, elderly scraps rolled up in pastry, or even fried things – chunks of anonymous fish, for example – according to appetite and budget.
There were those who couldn’t afford the street stalls, of course. If they waited until day’s end, a generous coffee-shop-owner might offer them a handful of scraps – trimmings, kitchen sweepings, anything that couldn’t be resold another day. Or they could take matters into their own hands and, as a friend of Mary’s vagabond days put it, “make their own prices”. It wasn’t difficult to pinch food, especially with an associate. Confectioners were easy, since they put out yesterday’s goods on tables to entice passing trade. And loose fruit was as good as windfall. But hot wares were trickiest, since they were kept covered, and Mary never outgrew her yearning for cooked meals. Even a badly roasted potato, burnt outside and grainy at the core, was better for being warm.
She finished her potato, which was not burnt, and contemplated a second course. But the dinner hour was passing fast and the coffee-shop across the road emptying of customers. They strolled to the door, those men, sleepy and replete, and stepped onto the pavement with an air of awaking from a pleasant dream. It was time to take another look.
The first man Mary recognized was Octavius Jones, sprawled easily at a corner table in a high-backed chair, an open notebook before him. This must be his favoured coffee-shop, the hive of gossip he’d mentioned in the Eye. Sitting across from Jones, with his back to the window, was Reid. She stopped and permitted herself a good, long look. Reid leaned towards Jones, as though forward momentum might help his concentration. His narrative was clearly of import; the man was practically vibrating in his chair. In contrast, Jones’s posture was casual. He had a pencil in hand but wrote nothing, asking only an occasional brief question. Neither man looked at the other; both were entirely focused on the story flowing between them.
Mary would have given much to know what that was. While it would likely appear in tomorrow’s Eye, that might be too late. It was already Friday; Wick was buried; and the inquest was waiting only for James’s report before returning a verdict. Without more concrete information, the Agency would be unable to challenge that decision, if necessary. However, for the moment she had seen all she could.
As she began to slip away, something in her movement, slight as it was, caught Jones’s eye. He glanced up, eyes widening, body going completely still for a fraction of a second. Then his gaze sharpened in recognition and he grinned at her through the glass, not the least bit put out to catch her spying. Indeed, he raised his thick glazed mug to her in a mocking toast. Reid, already twitching with anxiety, spun round instantly. His eyes were wild, suspicious – and, when they lighted on Mary, incredulous.
She stood, dumbstruck. The best thing she could do was to move on and assume that Reid saw only a nosy little boy. But she couldn’t shake the notion that in his eyes, in that look of startled recognition, he’d seen something else. Someone else. Not Mrs Fordham, necessarily; it needn’t be that specific. But Reid had seemed to look at her anew just then, and she was worried what that might mean.
Eighteen
Palace yard, Westminster
“Where d’you think you’re going?”
It was astonishing, the effect James had on her heartbeat. “Er – home?” A quick glance about showed they were nearly the last people on site.
“Wrong. You’re dining with me.”
“Like this?” She looked down at her dusty clothes, mud-caked shoes, grimy hands.
“Well, you could come home with me and have a bath first.” There was a distinct leer in his voice.
She blushed from toes to hairline. “Your brother would have fits.”
“He would,” he conceded. “I suppose, then, we’d best go elsewhere.”
“Where?”
“Don’t look so alarmed,” he grinned. “I was thinking of my office.”
“But your brother—”
“Won’t be there; he keeps gentleman’s hours. And even if he were, he’d not look twice at a scruffy little boy.”
This was the opportunity she’d been wishing for … so why was she hesitating now?
“This is hardly the time to come over all ladylike…”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snapped, her feet beginning to move of their own volition. “What’s for dinner?”
He grinned with satisfaction. “No idea. But it’ll be good.”
It was an absurdly short distance from Palace Yard to the offices of Easton Engineering in Great George Street – a matter of perhaps three hundred yards. And one of the freedoms of being Mark was that she could stroll quietly beside James through the sticky streets, dusty and weary at the end of a day’s work, without attracting a single questioning glance. As he’d promised, the offices were deserted but for a pair of clerks preparing to leave. James nodded to them casually. They returned the greeting, clearly accustomed to his irregular hours. Neither did more than glance at her.
Once they were in his private office, James pulled out a chair for her and she sat, amused. The first time she’d visited him here, he’d been rather hostile. But then, so had she.
“Dinner won’t take long,” he said. “It comes from a pub round the corner.”
“D’you always dine in the office?”
He shrugged. “I like to work late.”
She looked around the room. It was tidy, extremely so. Quite unlike the last time she’d seen it. “What are you working on right now, apart from the safety review?”
“Oh – I’m just sorting through old papers, getting ready for the next job.” Was that a blush? “Makes a change, having time to do that sort of thing.”
So he was underemployed. She wondered if it was because of his health or whether the firm itself was short of contracts.
“So – ”
“I suppose – ”
They’d spoken simultaneously.
“Sorry – you were saying?”
“Please – carry on.”
Their words collided again and he grinned. “Ladies first.”
“Even one such as I?”
“The most interesting sort there is.”
She couldn’t hold back a smile. “You’ve learned the art of fine-sounding nonsense since we last met.”
“Oh, I always had it.”
Moments ticked past. The smile lingered on her lips, in his eyes. It seemed enough – more than enough – simply to sit, saying nothing.
Eventually, though, he leaned forward. “Mary.”
“Yes?” Weary as she was, she hadn’t felt this awake for days. Weeks. Months.
“Are you…” He hesitated, trying to frame the sentence just right.
A double-knock on the office door made them both jump.
“Come in,” said James, sitting back hastily.
“’Evening, sir.” A young, coppery-haired barmaid entered carrying two trays, one stacked on the other. She advanced confidently and set the trays on the desk. “When the order come in for two dinners, I thought it were a mistake,” she giggled. Her green eyes flickered momentarily in Mary’s direction before returning to James. “I thought, ain’t one of Mrs Higgs’s portions big enough for a hungry gentleman?”
James’s smile was rather sheepish. “Good evening, Nancy.”
Nancy?
“And you’s early tonight,” she chided him, laying a place before James. “I weren’t expecting for to come for a couple hours yet.” It seemed to Mary that she was leaning forward quite a lot more than necessary, the better to display ample cleavage in a low-necked shirtwaist.
“Er – ” James cleared his throat. “Nancy, meet my young associate, Mark Quinn. Mark, this is Nancy of the Bull’s Head.”
“Charmed, I’m sure,” cooed Nancy, flashing her dimples at Mary. Before Mary could reply, she turned back to James. “Double-thick mutton chops, just as you like ’em, with French beans and tatties and all. And your Mr Barker didn’t say about a pudding, but I know as you’re partial to the f
ruit crumble so I brung it too, and a jug of cream.”
“It smells wonderful. Thank you.”
Nancy’s swift hands dealt out the dishes. Once she’d distributed the food and drink, she stood back and surveyed the desk with satisfaction. “I s’pose, being as your lad’s here, you won’t be needing company with your dinner tonight?”
“Er – no, thank you.”
She gave a good-natured pout. “I’ll come for to clear away in an hour, then, sir.”
“Very good.”
Tipping them a wink, she tucked the trays under a strong, dimpled arm and sashayed towards the door, skirts swaying in an imaginary breeze. For a full minute after the door closed behind her there was perfect silence. Mary stared hard at the feast laid before her. It looked appetizing and substantial and utterly luxurious, but she suddenly wanted none of it.
James cleared his throat awkwardly. “Well. Smells good,” he said.
“You’ve already said that,” she said acidly. Even as she spoke, she knew she was being, childish. What did she care, what James did with pretty barmaids? But she couldn’t seem to stop herself. “It’s no wonder you like Mrs Higgs’s cooking.”
There was an expression she didn’t like in James’s eyes. It looked suspiciously like satisfaction. “The cooking, among other things,” he said casually. “I often nip over for a pint in the snug.”
She would not rise to the bait. “I’m sure you do,” she heard herself say.
“It’s a friendly pub,” he drawled, brandishing his knife and fork. “Quiet. Select. And very friendly. Or have I said that already too?”
She poked a slender bean with more force than necessary. It was perfectly cooked, and she resented this too. “I’m sure it’s very pleasant.”
“It is.”
“Good.”
“Very welcoming.”
“I get the point.”
They ate in silence for several minutes, and despite her jealousy Mary discovered that she was ravenous. Table manners, she decided, were an affectation invented by those who’d never been hungry.