by Jess Kidd
Bill Tackett, shopkeeper, assumes, during hours of commerce, his post behind the counter. Under which the cash-box lives (which nowadays is empty of needful but full of other things: smooth pebbles, gull-feathers and a green glass marble). A clawed knuckle of a man, as one preserved by curses and salt-water, much like an ancient mariner himself. He wears a waxed sou’wester pulled down around his ears and rope to keep his trousers pulled high. He has a pursed corrugated mussel of a mouth and glancy black eyes that would not be unfitting on a crab. Bill’s mouth and eyes are currently expressing a heightened pursing and glancing. His wife has been away for years and he wasn’t best pleased to see her returned. Nor was he best pleased that she had some ramshackle cove in tow (a doctor, it is alleged), along with a waterman needing paying and a casket containing goods mysterious.
The doctor, faint on arrival and with violent gurgulations of the stomach, was shown to an abandoned guest-room. Bill’s wife attended him immediately with preparations and a drop of calf’s-foot broth, and not a peep from him since. The casket, however, has been nothing but noisy, what with the scraping and the tapping. At the behest of his wife, Bill moved the casket into the repair-room just off the main shop. Too dark to work in and too damp to use as a store, it offers a barred window set at floor level, too low for light, a bench, a chair and naught else. His wife called for a wash-tub and a bucket of market fish of whatever variety. These provisions being delivered for the comfort of the new occupant, Bill was banished from the room whilst his wife opened the casket. This done, she came out, locked the door and hung the key about her neck on a strong cord.
Now Bill sits one end of a table in the back room of the old ship-chandlery shop. At the other end sits his wife with her bad leg on a footstool.
‘So, there it is,’ she says. ‘That’s the story of it.’
‘Of all the twisted things you’ve done in your life, wife,’ Bill says, ‘this takes the frigging biscuit.’
She laughs across the debris of their meal, three empty gin bottles and a dish of cold slink veal.
‘You pretended to be a child’s nurse at a country house . . .’ Bill is incredulous. ‘What are you even calling yourself now?’
‘Mrs Bibby,’ she grins.
Bill groans. ‘My own mother’s maiden name!’
‘I’ve no shame.’
‘You go on to steal this child, under the nose of a bleeding lord—’
‘A baronet.’
Bill narrows his tiny eyes. ‘And transport the poor wretch about the country in a coffin.’
‘A casket,for her own good.’
‘You truly are a nasty old bitch,’ Bill replies. He picks up a knife from the table. ‘Release her. Return her to her friends,’ he orders, heroically.
‘Put the knife down, you’ll cause yourself a calamity.’ His wife adjusts her bad leg on a footstool with a stream of emphatic curses. ‘That child represents an investment of trouble on my part. I am expecting a return on that investment.’
Bill puts the knife down. ‘And the doctor? He’ll want his share and if this goes arseways he’ll be the first to direct you to the gallows.’
‘What doctor?’
‘Ah, no—’ Bill looks up at the ceiling. ‘You didn’t do that here?’
‘Why must you think the worst of me?’
Bill gets up from his chair, lists around the table and takes a seat next to her.
He chooses his words carefully and delivers them with great sincerity in his eyes. ‘Here I sit, wife, next to this stinking bleeding’ leg of yours, to implore you, nay, to beg you: give up that child. Do what is right and fitting and proper.’
‘Husband, you are a blunt tool and you always have been.’
‘Your leg is bad, wife, that big swollen foot on you and them toes just pus bags, rotten soft.’
‘You’re right.’
‘I hope they drop off, them toes, one after another. I hope that blight spreads and claims you. After all, it’s only the rot you’ve always had at the heart of you.’
Bill’s wife laughs like water draining.
A man calls in at the old ship-chandlery shop, a stranger; large, but agile, scarred face and hands, close-cropped hair and a grown-out beard in the Crimean fashion. He has a quiet, hostile way about him. Bill knows enough about the world to know that this fella is not only used to bad business, he excels in it. Bill says nothing, but keeps a weather-eye open below the brim of his sou’wester. His wife leads the stranger through the cobwebbed clutter and into the back room and closes the door behind them. Tightening the rope on his trousers and pulling down his hat against probable squalls, Bill loiters near the door. He hears words – package, Polegate, delivery – then footsteps heading towards the door. Bill scuttles back behind the counter, his old thumper yammering its complaint against the hull of his rib-racks. As the stranger leaves he tips his hat and sends Bill a look of such dedicated malice that the ancient mariner would run away to sea in a bucket if he had one sound enough to paddle.
The child doesn’t notice Mrs Bibby come into the repair-room because she is standing at the window.
The lid has been pushed off the casket. The restraints lie tangled in the bottom. Mrs Bibby blames herself, for hadn’t she, in a fit of kindness, left the lid open for a bit of air and loosened the straps on the growing child?
And there she is: Christabel Berwick.
Standing in the light from the low, barred window. Pale of limb, white of nightie, like any plain, thin, two-a-penny child.
Mrs Bibby finds herself touched with something that could be pity – that might be pity. How would she know, with a callused heel of a heart inside her? But there it is: a sudden urge to weep at the sight of those arms and legs and feet, pigeon-toed. Or, at the child’s uncertain shrug and bob as she steps forward, chary chick. Add her too-thin garment, the peculiar curve of her spine and the frail knots of her wrists. Yes, Mrs Bibby could be set weeping forevermore, if she wasn’t a flint-souled old hex.
Outside: voices, high-noted, piping.
Inside: Christabel, cautious, sniffs and peers.
A small hand comes in through the barred window. The hand opens slowly. In the palm: a pebble.
Christabel lowers her face the better to see. The hand moves; she recoils. The hand is urging her to take the pebble. She takes the pebble, carefully, carefully, between her fingers and thumb. She presses it to her mouth. It is a kiss.
Mrs Bibby limps closer.
Christabel startles and scrambles to the corner, forgetting to walk in her alarm – forgetting she can stand and walk like a plain, thin, two-a-penny child.
Mrs Bibby ignores her. Her tomcat smile widens as she draws nearer the window. She bends down.
Three small faces look in at her from outside.
‘Would you like to join us for tea?’ She addresses the largest girl, the one in the middle, in a voice sweet and easy. ‘We have cakes: seed, pound, tipsy and fruit. And apple hat, I do believe!’
There is a brief exchange, then the largest girl turns, nudging the others, and trudges towards the doorway of the old ship-chandlery shop.
Chapter 22
Cora clatters around the bedroom collecting the appurtenances of Bridie’s gentleman disguise: ineffables, tippet-fur whiskers, waistcoat and hat. Bridie is late to rise, for she was late to bed and barely slept when she was in it.
She drinks coffee and turns to the letters Cora has presented her with. When Cora leaves the room, she’ll light her pipe, still in the bed. A shameless vice Cora heartily disapproves of. But Bridie deserves it, having survived the first sighting of Gideon Eames since he was sent away. That he has the power to unnerve her, after all this time, she isn’t surprised. That he is a different man now than when he was young, Bridie has her doubts.
Bridie opens the first letter. It is written in a plodding hand with some pooling of ink (suggesting lengthy consultations of dictionaries and suchlike).
Maris House
Polegate
; East Sussex
––September 1863
Dear Mrs Devine,
Gone about as asked. Here is the NEWS. Mrs Swann closed the house. Myrtle away with London uncle. But HEAR THIS. Mrs Swann says doctor is gone to BATH if you please. I pray Myrtle finds a good spot in London PLEASE GOD. Having no mother but what one expired in bringing the POOR CHILD into the world and now no father of any use. HAVE YOU SEEN HER?
The tramping woman as you found was put in the parish church-yard. GOD REST HER SOUL. She wants a name and the police reckon they have found one. Master grows thin and walks as one HAG RIDDEN. Mr Puck says Master has not shut his eyes since the child was taken.
MAY GOD BLESS AND KEEP YOU and believe me most sincerely yours,
Miss Agnes Molloy
Bridie turns to the second letter, written in shaky copperplate, as befitting a hag-ridden baronet.
Maris House
Polegate
East Sussex
––September 1863
Mrs Devine,
What news? Address to MR PUCK. Earliest convenience.
I remain, etc. etc.
(*Unintelligible)
Bridie puts down the letters, lights her pipe and sinks back into her pillows to watch the smoke curl.
The residents of Denmark Street have been up for hours. She can hear them outside going about their every-days: hawking, scrubbing doorsteps and complaining about the low, thick fog that has descended upon the city like an unwashed bedsheet. Oh, the unwholesome colour! Like sinus rot, and dense, like only a London Particular can be. You could scoop it into a tankard and it would mug there. Only today the fog is behaving even more queerly than usual. For one thing, it has been seen moving against the wind. In Richmond, where the air is more refined, the fog is as needle lace, drifting by in delicate patterns. Under Waterloo Bridge it takes the form of gambolling otters. In Southwark it undulates like eels. The day is already dark and it has hardly begun. Omnibus lanterns are lit and progress is at walking pace, with the drear rattle of harnesses and the slow growl of wheels. People and buildings emerge and disappear, as does your own hand when it’s not half an inch before your eye.
Bridie sees neither otters nor eels at her window, just a touch of dirty weather: reason enough not to get up. Soon Cora will be back to nag her out of the bed and into a corset. They’ll argue about the plan for the day while she threatens Bridie’s hair with a brush. Then Bridie will sit down to breakfast. Ruby will be there, in the corner of the room, waiting. Re-tying the bandages on his fists, or stroking his magnificent moustache, or hitching up his drawers absent-mindedly.
But for now Bridie smokes her pipe and lets everything she knows, and doesn’t know, and thinks she knows, wash over her. The cast of this pantomime present themselves in the playhouse of her mind.
Bridie watches them file on stage.
Christabel Berwick, white-haired and pearl-eyed, is the first to arrive. She skips on human legs and bobs a perfect curtsey. She smiles, pike-toothed and terrifying. Sir Edmund and his servants, Dr Harbin and Myrtle, follow. The little circus king Lester Lufkin dressed as a ringmaster makes an entrance. Ellen Kelly floats by, with her fair hair wet and her lips blue and beetles in her corset. Mrs Bibby is there too: a limp and a space where her face would be (if Bridie knew what it looked like). Reverend Gale and Widmerpole join the group, and here is the spurious Cridge, cigar in hand, sneering. There is a whispering and shuffling and a parting of the crowd – everyone steps aside for a latecomer. Smiling and golden, Gideon Eames claims centre stage and takes a bow.
*
The post room at Mudie’s Select Library is a grand place to have a sit and a wait for yourself. The bustle of New Oxford Street and Museum Road seems far away here. The only sounds to be heard are the slump and sway of Ruby Doyle pacing in his unlaced boots and the clock in the corner ticking. Out in the main hall, the library clerks move behind their desks with polite precision, issuing a baffling number of books with a sleight-of-hand deftness. Footmen wait to carry out bundles while gentlemen and ladies peruse the catalogues. Carriages draw up outside, bringing illustrious readers. Bridie leafs through the neat piles of books waiting to be wrapped and dispatched to Mudie’s postal subscribers. One book catches her eye.
The Psychic Way
By Madam Volkov
A discourse on HAUNTINGS,
Poltergeists, Spectres, Lost and Stubborn Entities
Keep your home FREE from GHOSTS
OR
ENCOURAGE them into your home.
Séances for EDIFICATION and PLEASURE
Ruby throws her a curious glance. ‘What is it?’
‘Novel.’
‘You’ll get nowhere reading them,’ advises Ruby and continues pacing, hat in hand. ‘They shrink the mind.’
Bridie snorts.
The clerk returns, a thin young man with a sickly pallor and long fingers that pat and dab with prim reverence on book and paper.
He looks at Bridie with anxious eyes. ‘If I give you this information, Mrs Devine—’
‘I’ll be as silent as the grave,’ Bridie reassures. ‘You have my word.’
The clerk, Willie, is the son of William Whitaker, Denmark Street, tassel-mould maker. She’ll do nothing to jeopardise a neighbour’s position.
Willie nods. ‘This is the client’s reading list, all fiction.’
‘What sort of fiction?’
‘Popular. Likes a bit of sensation.’
‘Who doesn’t? Kidnapped heiresses, Gothic houses, heinous crimes – that sort of thing?’
‘The Woman in White has been requested several times. Lady Audley, she’s been in and out on this ticket.’
‘Rattling tales, Willie. You have an address for this reader?’
‘A residence in Somers Town, only the name on the account is different from the one you gave me. I double-checked the docket.’
He hands a neatly written card to Bridie.
Fanny Squeers.
‘Something tells me we have a fan of Mr Dickens,’ she says.
Ruby ambles back and looks over her shoulder at the card. He’s none the wiser.
‘It’s the name of a fictional character,’ Bridie explains to him.
‘I’m aware of that, Mrs Devine,’ Willie responds. ‘But there’s a real reader behind the name, all right.’
Bridie glances at him with curiosity. ‘You know them?’
‘No, madam,’ frowns Willie. ‘But they send their maid to collect the books – I wouldn’t forget her in a hurry.’
‘Can you describe this maid?’
‘Rough-mannered, limp.’ Willie’s frown deepens. ‘She has language.’
Bridie produces from the pocket of her skirt the book she found in the nurse’s room at Maris House. ‘One of Fanny Squeers’s. Overdue, I think.’
‘It would be.’
Ruby, sensing the interview is nearly concluded, sculls to the door and watches the librarians go about their work.
Bridie points to the book on the table. ‘I’ll borrow that,’ she whispers. ‘Can you add it to my ticket?’
Willie picks up the book. ‘I wouldn’t have put you down for this kind of thing, Mrs Devine. Ghosts and ghouls.’
Ruby glances over his shoulder.
‘If you could just issue the thing.’
Willie turns the pages and lets out a chuckle. ‘Oh, sublime! Spectral Love: When Your Beau Is Deceased.’
Bridie snatches the book and pushes it into her pocket, ignoring Ruby’s delighted expression.
A deluge of rain and the roads have become a slippery quagmire; mud, in prodigious quantities, keeps the crossing-sweepers busy on every corner and the pedestrians busy staying upright. Bridie makes her way down New Oxford Street towards the British Museum. Ruby is at her side of course, drawers hoisted, topper tipped back, walking with his rolling prize-fighter gait. They pass Russell Square and Woburn Square, all laid out in gardens. Gordon Square with University Hall and knots of students. Euston and beyond; t
he grandeur of the squares behind them. Ahead, Somers Town and the once-fine houses overrun with ragbag families.
Fanny Squeers’s residence in Sidney Street is a thin, tired, loveless house, wedged between two large, encroaching houses with the look of dowagers elbowing their way onto an omnibus. By the door is a sign: Mrs Peach’s Guest-House.
On gaining admission, by way of Mrs Peach’s maid, a nervous girl of no more than twelve, Bridie soon realises that the care-worn façade of the house belies the extreme vivacity of the interior. Mrs Peach’s narrow parlour is decorated as exuberantly as Mrs Peach’s person. A gaudy old parrot, her avian counterpart, lolls on a perch in the corner. Its plush is a little frayed and its beak is a little flaked, but its beady eye is unfaded.
Apart from a parrot there is a comprehensive collection of knick-knacks and trinkets, many of which are placed high out of reach of Mrs Peach’s crinoline, an expensive structure demonstrating a bewildering range of swags, ruffles, pleats and bows.
Bridie takes a seat while Mrs Peach battles her crinoline into an armchair. Ruby stands out of the way in the chimney-breast, amid shelves bearing silver-framed photographs, china animals, samplers, ormolu clocks and embroidered bunting. Mrs Peach shows a full leg length of flounced pantalette before managing to beat her hooped cage into submission.
Ruby politely averts his eyes.
The narrow proportions of Mrs Peach’s parlour and the extraordinary wealth of possessions crammed into it mean that Bridie is seated in close proximity to the landlady herself. From this intimate distance, of no more than two feet, Bridie can marvel at the artistry and invention behind Mrs Peach’s radiant complexion.