by Jess Kidd
Chapter 33
A little after dawn Bridie stirs from her bed. She taps the contents of last night’s pipe into the fire and reaches for her pouch of Prudhoe’s Bronchial Balsam Blend. It is empty. Then she searches for her other supplies, the twist in the parlour cupboard, the stash in the umbrella stand, the packet in her petticoat pocket. All smoked. She’ll send out to Prudhoe directly, but it could be days before a delivery. And then it strikes her, how much she has come to rely on the continued presence of Ruby Doyle, boxer, deceased, who may or may not have known her. This is a tenuous basis indeed for a friendship. Yet here she is, unable to contemplate life without the man. A dead man, who appeared with a wisp of smoke in a chapel-yard, and who, in all likelihood, could just as soon disappear. Bridie inspects the empty bowl of her pipe. She could start smoking cigars, Hussar Blend, and see what sort of monstrosity that would throw up. With sudden joy she remembers the nugget under her pillow and hopes to God it will be enough.
Ruby is late joining Bridie at the breakfast table. She barely looks up from her newspaper nor does she show the rush of relief she feels. He’s been sparring again; his bandages loosed, spectral sweat sheening his skin, his drawers hanging low. He nods at her, smoothing his beautiful black moustache.
‘I need a disguise, Ruby, I need to get inside that house.’
‘Ah, now—’
‘His housekeeper has been taking delivery of crates. And a sack carried carefully from a late-night carriage.’
‘And how do you know this?’
‘Master Jem the crossing-sweeper: my new retainer. Gideon Eames is up to something.’
‘You’ll be donning your top hat, Bridie?’
‘I have a better idea.’
Cora says it’s best to work outside, where the light is better. She props her shaving mirror on the coal-bunker and mixes the stage-paint. The neighbourhood children hang over the wall, watching with fascination as Cora creates Mrs Devine a new face – twenty, no thirty, bloody years older! The tiny paintbrush handled with precision in the housemaid’s huge fingers. Even close up it is convincing. When Bridie smiles, revealing her knocked-out teeth, it is even better. Bridie adds the massive spectacles Cora uses for the reading of penny-bloods. She knots her hair in a headscarf and throws an old shawl about her shoulders.
Bridie leaves her widow’s cap, ugly bonnet and good cape at home. She stops the first ribbon seller she sees. For a heavy price Bridie buys the woman’s bonnet, clogs and basket of wares. Then she tucks her own boots into the basket.
Now she walks differently: in too-tight, pinching clogs she patters. She carries the wide basket out in front and keeps the too-big bonnet from slipping down by keeping her head high and her chin stuck out. The whole effect is that of a purposeful owl.
She makes her way to Cavendish Square, slips into the garden opposite Gideon Eames’s house, and sits down on a bench and waits. The house gives nothing away. It is as elegant and respectable as its neighbours. Bridie knows better. And because she knows better she has her pepper-box pistol tucked in the bottom of her ribbon basket, under the organdies and velvets, satins and lace, printed and plain and top-notch jacquards. She turns her face up to the sun and waits.
Bridie wakes to a feeling of movement; a little hand rummaging in her ribbon basket. She opens her eyes and looks down at Myrtle Harbin.
Myrtle Harbin, her bonnet on crooked and chocolate pudding around her mouth, one-eyed Rosebud under her arm. The doctor’s daughter slowly extracts her hand and grins widely.
Myrtle sits on the bench next to Bridie. She swings her legs and glances over her shoulder from time to time.
‘So you slipped out, Myrtle?’
‘The nurse has her sleep in the afternoon, after her gin.’
‘And that’s when you go on your wanders?’
‘It is.’
‘Your nurse is not Mrs Bibby, by any chance?’
Myrtle shakes her head. ‘You look silly.’ A laugh comes bubbling up. The child puts her hand over her mouth politely.
Bridie squints peevishly through her spectacles.
Myrtle laughs.
‘You live with Gideon Eames now, why is that, Myrtle?’
‘I am his ward.’ She pronounces the last word slowly and with emphasis, the way it has been taught to her.
‘Dr Eames must know your papa, then?’
Myrtle thinks about this then she wrinkles her nose. ‘Mr Kemp came to get me.’
‘I see,’ says Bridie. ‘Any sign of Christabel?’
Myrtle shakes her head.
‘Would you like to come home with me? You can meet Cora Butter. She is seven feet tall and has mutton-chop whiskers.’
Myrtle’s eyes widen. ‘Might there be chocolate pudding? I’m very partial.’
‘There might be.’
Myrtle ponders this for a moment. ‘No, thank you, I have a job to do for Dr Eames.’
‘What is it?’
‘Never you mind.’ She opens her hand and inspects the ribbons she’s stolen and the ribbons Bridie has given to her.
Bridie points through the railings. ‘See that boy over there, Myrtle? The crossing-sweeper.’
Myrtle nods.
‘His name is Jem. If you ever need to get a message to me, he’ll take it.’
‘If I want to come and meet Cora Butter?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Or if I see Christabel?’ she says, craftily.
‘That too.’
Myrtle winds a blue satin ribbon around her finger and looks back at the house. ‘Oh, mercy, it’s awoke.’
The front door of Gideon Eames’s house has opened. A bleak-faced omnibus of a woman is advancing down the steps.
‘Your nurse?’ says Bridie.
Myrtle groans.
The nurse rattles across the road and into the gardens with argument in her eye and a set to her jaw.
Myrtle bobs a clumsy curtsey and is gone, grabbing up Rosebud, hopping off into the shrubbery.
Chapter 34
Cremorne is reborn. The gardens are the new one-time-only-visit-while-it-lasts home of Lester Lufkin’s famous circus. The big top is erected; Lufkin’s colours fly on every flagpole. It’s all acrobats and bunting, grottos and caves and gambolling seals and Arctic bears. The little circus king sails up and down the river daily on a golden barge. His oarsmen, a tribe of Greeks to rival Jason and his Argonauts, wear fins on their glistening naked brown backs. Lufkin waves regally at the populace, returning their shouts of affectionate abuse. Or else he rides up and down the Strand in a barouche, drawn by a team of zebras supplied by Mr Jamrach from Ratcliff Highway. Mr Jamrach is also the likely supplier of penguins; a large and bellicose male seal christened Wilberforce; and whole shoals of bright tank-able fish. The bear, lion and elephant are the showman’s own.
Madam Cremorne has seen it all, of course; the pleasure garden is an expert in transformation. By day, she’s rose-lipped and bright-eyed, wholesome and fun for the family. But at night, painted gaudy, lolling seedy, picking her remaining teeth, she entertains fops, pimps, artists and molls. But now here is ringmaster Lufkin with every honest chance of tripling revenue! Cremorne senses the quickening pulse of commerce and rejoices.
Lufkin, however, is not so sure. He stands, fur-trimmed and perplexed, outside his campaign tent. He’s a spit away from the grand opening and without a headlining act. And his showman’s intuition is telling him he isn’t going to find one in the coffin-like box that his men are carrying towards him with trepidation. The hired boat-hands cast off with a look of relief.
The gathering of flocks of bickering sea-birds and the sudden choppiness of the Thames hardly reassure. Thankfully it’s a murky day on the cusp of evening, with a sudden icy wind that sends sensible Londoners seeking shelter in snugs and by homely hearths. So perhaps Lufkin and his guard are the only witnesses to this delivery.
Lufkin calls for more lanterns. When these are brought he orders all entrances to his tent to be secured. He circles the
casket, slowly, scratching his beard; noticing the drilled air holes. Not a sound can be heard from inside.
He gestures to his regal guard to open it.
The little circus king peers into the casket. ‘Gentlemen, I have been taken for a plum. She looks like a plain girl to me. Where’s her bleeding tail?’
‘You have to put it in water first,’ volunteers one of the guards.
‘What’s with the restraints?’
‘It’s violent, sir.’
Lufkin runs a caustic eye over the guard and returns his attention to the occupant of the casket. ‘Who would keep an individual in this way?’ he asks in disbelief.
One of the guards, nudged sharply by the other, steps forward, removing a folded piece of paper from the pocket of his gold liveried jacket.
‘Begging your pardon, sir, but a note came too. Shall I read it to you?’
Lufkin holds his hand out for the note. Extracting a monocle from his embroidered tabard, he commences to read it, upside-down, with all the attendant noises that the effort of reading usually provokes.
‘You have to wear gauntlets, sir,’ suggests the guard. ‘The note says.’
‘Quite.’
‘The note says that it bites,’ adds the guard, clenching his teeth meaningfully.
Lufkin is indignant. ‘My acts do not bite, sir. Nor are they kept in a bleeding’ box. They have contracts and country estates. They are amusing after-dinner speakers. They are received by high society and nobility.’
The guard drops his oculars to the carpeted ground.
‘Bring my wife – she makes a great fist of anything slippery. She’ll know what to do with her.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Tell Euryale to pretty her up a bit, get the hair off her face, a dab of rouge. See if she can hold a note, or bloody juggle. And for God’s sake, do something about that smell.’
Night is all but past and the circus king is long abed by the time his errant queen is found and brought to his feasting tent.
The casket stands closed under heavy guard. It is studded with snails. Snails pool, too, on the floor all around, along with the newts.
Euryale, clad in cloak and python, draws nearer. As she does the python drops down and wraps itself in quick desperate loops around her legs, shackling her to the spot.
‘He won’t let me,’ whispers Euryale. ‘He’s frightened.’
The guards look sympathetic, but there’s no way they’ll hold her snake.
Euryale makes soothing noises, untangling it and wrapping it instead around a tent pole. Then she nods to the guards, who open the lid.
The smell is unholy.
Euryale approaches with her sleeve over her mouth and nose.
The child lies at the bottom of the casket. White hair obscures her face. She wears a restraining jacket of thick canvas over a reach-me-down velvet dress that has seen better days. Her arms are crossed and secured to her chest with buckles and straps.
Euryale strokes the hair from the girl’s face, for she is a girl, whatever else. She finds tight-closed eyes with matted lashes, a dainty nose and a white-lipped mouth. Her skin is flaking, sloughing strips of dying tissue, and her hair falls out in patches. It is wrapped around her fists, tangled around her fingernails.
There is movement, but it is not breathing. Creamy maggots burrow in the strands of her pale hair; they tumble in the folds of her clothes. Fighting back her revulsion and her pity, Euryale touches Christabel’s face lightly, gently.
The child is cold stone.
When Euryale arrives on Bridie’s doorstep in Denmark Street with the morning, her face is raw with tears.
October 1843
Chapter 35
Bridie stood before Dr Eames’s desk as he signed the letter, blotted and sealed it.
‘Are you certain that this is what you want, Bridget?’
‘Yes, sir,’ she replied.
Dr Eames nodded.
Between them lay a world of lies and truth, of Gideon’s leaving and her part in it.
Dr Eames had aged since Eliza’s attack, becoming very much thinner but walking as if he was very much heavier, moving his limbs slowly and with effort. This was a worry for Mrs Donsie, who rightly predicted that the doctor (being no longer hale and hearty) would be more easily carried off by a hospital fever. Oddly, it was the sending away, not of Gideon, but of Edgar, that was the breaking of him. Dr Eames had watched Gideon’s carriage out of sight without a flicker of emotion, but when it came for him to hand over the small, surly bundle, he had cried. The butler saw and told no one. The footman saw and told the world. This was curious behaviour indeed for a commonly composed man. And besides, the household knew Edgar to be a joyless child who had latterly begun to show a troubling cruelty to helpless things. Everyone but Dr Eames, apparently, met the boy’s removal to an appropriate institution with relief.
‘I understand. This place, without her—’ Dr Eames lowered his eyes. ‘Was it peaceful?’ he whispered.
‘Eliza didn’t suffer, sir.’
He sat a moment, at the desk, head bowed.
Then he pushed the envelope towards her. ‘Your letter of introduction. You will learn with this man; he has ideas but he’s a good doctor and an excellent chemist.’
Bridie picked up the letter. It was addressed to Dr. R. F. Prudhoe.
‘You will have an annuity, enough for a simple but respectable life.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
As she turned to go he called her back. He stood up and took her hand. Into her palm he put a guinea.
October 1863
Chapter 36
Blue walls, white sheets and outside it is raining again: big soft drops landing plash against the glass.
The child in the bed in the blue room, see her: she’s a church-yard angel, a marble carving, with her pale curls and her stony, sealed-closed eyes.
Sleeping, perhaps.
Snug as a pearl in an oyster. But she is not a pearl, for she has lost her lustre.
She has a visitor. The child in the bed in the blue room. A girl comes creeping to the chair at the side of the bed.
The visitor climbs onto the chair with much clucking and the adjusting of petticoats. She taps the toes of her new shoes together. White satin, blush bows, O Lord! She wiggles her feet in their finery.
She glances at the child in the bed who has no shoes at all. Poor lamb.
She walks a one-eyed doll across the pillow.
Rosebud, a breakfast of porridge in her hair, looks down aghast (through her one working peeper) at the child in the bed, who doesn’t move at all.
‘Christabel,’ Rosebud whispers softly, through her tiny china mouth. ‘Wake up!’
Rosebud will not say the new name. Sibéal. For it’s perfectly ugly and she doesn’t believe in ugly names.
Rosebud taps the child’s face with her little china hand. ‘Chris-tah-bel.’
The child in the bed does not move.
Rosebud pirouettes back across the pillow.
The visitor, weary now (isn’t it dull to be ever at a sickbed!), hops down from the chair.
Being a good visitor she extracts a token of her esteem from her pocket, to increase the comfort and cheer of the invalid. This time it is a prune. Before breakfast it was an interesting button. The time before that (after the patient had been bathed and was not stinking): a beautiful ribbon.
The child in the bed wears the ribbon now. Blue satin in her white hair.
The good visitor sculls to the mantelpiece where the given gifts are ranged. She pushes the prune into line with her fingertip. She strokes the button.
Rosebud whispers in her ear. ‘What was that, Rosebud? Yes, you may kiss her gently.’
Doll and visitor stalk back across the room.
Rosebud very gently bends her face to the child in the bed. Kiss. The touch of cold, porridgey china.
‘Don’t die,’ advises Rosebud, in a solemn whisper.
The good visitor closes her eyes and say
s a prayer to Jesus, who watches over all sickly children and creatures, that Christabel won’t die.
Rosebud says, ‘Amen.’
‘We shall come again very soon,’ says the good visitor brightly and pats the counterpane.
The child in the bed does not move.
*
She has a visitor, the child in the bed in the blue room. A man comes skulking to the chair at the side of the bed.
He sits down on the chair and runs his hand through his thin, light-brown hair. It cleaves thinly to an oddly-shaped head.
He eyes the girl in the bed who has not moved at all.
He sets about lighting a cigar, a pop of the flame and then the sweet reek of cat shit and straw.
He sits in the chair, watching the child. Smoking.
The child in the bed does not move.
She has a visitor, the child in the bed in the blue room. He moves the chair close to the side of the bed and sits down. Blue eyes, a golden beard threaded with grey.
He leans forward and strokes back her hair. He touches her cheek.
The incredible touch of her. She is like nothing in nature. Skin waxy and damp and cold, an unnatural coldness.
The child in the bed does not move.
He studies her face; the closed pods of her eyes. The ridge of her cheekbone, curved as a gill. Inside the pale lips parted, teeth just visible - small and sharp, pike-like.
‘We lost you for a while,’ says her visitor, ‘and for that I’m very sorry.’
Behind the eyelids the inky shadows of the pupils flicker.
He bends down to her ear.
‘Wake up, Sibéal,’ he whispers. ‘Don’t you want to see the sea?’
Chapter 37
There is silence this luncheon-time in Lester Lufkin’s great feasting tent. All eyes are fixed on the little circus king, whose eyes are locked on Bridie Devine, who is flanked by a giant housemaid and Euryale, Queen of Snakes. Lufkin’s guards, sensing a threat towards their master’s person, step back. Mrs Devine’s scowl is primal. As if, given half a chance, she would leap over the table and shake Lufkin to death by his throat. Lufkin is in love.