Black Hearts in Battersea

by Joan Aiken

  He purchased a quantity of cold ham and a loaf of bread and then returned to Rose Alley where the door of Number Eight still stood open.

  Surprisingly enough, young Miss Twite had taken a pair of sheets and blankets up to the top room and was rather carelessly throwing them over the bed.

  ‘Now let’s see the kitty,’ she said.

  Simon’s kitten was equally eager to be let out from its travelling-quarters, and gave a mighty stretch before mewing loudly for bread-and-milk.

  ‘I suppose you’re hungry too,’ Simon said, noticing Miss Twite’s hopeful looks at the loaf.

  ‘Aren’t I jist? Ma said I was to miss my dinner on account of burning Penny’s hat – spiteful thing.’

  ‘Who’s Penny?’ Simon asked, cutting her a slice.

  ‘My sister. Oo, she’s a horrible girl. She’s sixteen. Her real name’s Pen-el-o-pe.’ She mouthed it out disgustedly.

  ‘What’s yours?’

  ‘Dido.’

  ‘I never heard that name before.’

  ‘It’s after a barge. So’s Penny. Can I have another bit?’

  He gave her another, noticing that she had already eaten most of the ham.

  ‘Can I take the kitty down and play in the street?’

  ‘No, I’m going to bed now, and so’s the kitty. Tell your father that I’ve taken the room for a week and I’m waiting for Dr Field.’

  ‘I tell you,’ she said, turning in the doorway for emphasis, ‘there ain’t any Dr Field. There never has been any Dr Field.’

  Simon shrugged and waited till she had gone. Then he went across into the room that faced on to the river and stared out of the window. It was nearly dark by now, and the opposite bank glittered with lights, some low down by the water, some high up on St Paul’s. Barges glided upstream with the tide, letting out mournful hoots. Dr Field had been here, Dr Field had seen this view. Dr Field must be somewhere. But where?

  Simon soon went to sleep, though the mattress was hard and the bedding scanty. At about one in the morning, however, he and the kitten, who was asleep on his chest, were awakened by very loud singing and the slamming of several doors downstairs.

  Presently, as the singer apparently mounted several flights of stairs, the words of the song could be distinguished:

  ‘My Bonnie lies over the North Sea,

  My Bonnie lies over in Hanover,

  My Bonnie lies over the North Sea,

  Oh, why won’t they bring that young man over?

  Bring back, bring back,

  Oh, bring back my Georgie to me, to me …’

  Simon realized that the singer must be one of the Georgians, or Hanoverians as they were sometimes called, who wanted to dethrone King James and bring back the Pretender, young Prince George of Hanover. He couldn’t help wondering if the singer were aware of his rashness in thus making known his political feelings, for since the long and hard-fought Hanoverian wars had secured King James III on the throne, the mood of the country was strongly anti-Georgian and anybody who proclaimed his sympathy for the Pretender was liable to be ducked in the nearest horsepond, if not haled off to the Tower for treason.

  ‘Abednego!’ cried a sharp female voice. ‘Abednego, will you hold your hush this instant! Hold your hush and come downstairs – I’ve your night cap a-warming and a hot salamander in the bed – and besides, you’ll wake the neighbours!’

  ‘Neighbours be blowed!’ roared the voice of the singer. ‘What do I care about the neighbours? I need solitude. I need to commune with Nature. I’m going to sleep up in the top room. Mind I’m not called in the morning till eleven past when you can bring me a mug of warm ale and a piece of toast.’

  The steps came, very unsteadily, up the last flight of stairs. The kitten prudently retired under the bed just before the door burst open and a man lurched into the room.

  He carried a candle which, after several false tries, he succeeded in placing on the table, muttering to himself:

  ‘Cursed Picts and Jacobites! They’ve moved it again. Every time I leave the house those Picts and Jacobites creep in and shift the furniture.’

  He turned towards the bed and for the first time saw Simon sitting up and staring at him.

  ‘A Pict!’ he shrieked. ‘Help! Ella! There’s a Pict got into the house! Bring the poker and the axe! Quick!’

  ‘Don’t talk fiddlesticks,’ the lady called up the stairs. ‘There’s nothing up top that shouldn’t be there – as I should know. Didn’t I scrub up there with bath-brick for days together? I’ll Pict you!’

  ‘Are you Mr Twite?’ Simon said, hoping to reassure the man.

  ‘Ella! It speaks! It’s a Pict and it speaks!’

  ‘Hold your hush or I’ll lambast you with the salamander!’ she shouted.

  But as the man made no attempt to hold his hush but continued to shriek and to beseech Ella to bring the poker and the axe, there came at length the sound of more feet on the stairs and a lady entered the room carrying, not the axe, but a warming-pan filled with hot coals, which she shook threateningly.

  ‘Come along down this minute, Abednego, or I’ll give you such a rousting!’ she snapped, and then she saw Simon. Her mouth and eyes opened very wide, and she almost dropped the warming-pan, but, retaining her hold on it, shortened her grip and advanced towards the bed in a very intimidating manner.

  ‘And who might you be?’ she said.

  ‘If you please, ma’am, my name is Simon, and I rented your top rooms from your daughter Dido this evening – if you’re Mrs Twite, that is?’ Simon said.

  ‘I’m Mrs Twite, all right,’ she said ominously. ‘And what’s more, I’m the one that lets rooms in this house, and so I’ll tell that young good-for-nothing baggage. Renting rooms to all and sundry! We might have been murdered in our beds!’

  Simon reflected that it looked much more as if he would be the one to be murdered in his bed. Mrs Twite was standing beside the bed with the warming-pan held over him menacingly; at any moment, it seemed, she might drop the whole panful of hot coals on his legs.

  She was a large, imposing woman, with a quantity of gingerish fair hair all done up in curl-papers so that her head was a strange and fearsome shape.

  In order to show this good intentions as quickly as possible Simon got out his money, which he had stowed under the pillow, and offered Mrs Twite five half-crowns.

  ‘I understand the room is twelve and six a week,’ he said.

  ‘Boots and washing extra!’ she snapped, her eyes going as sharp as bradawls at sight of the money. ‘And it’ll be another half-crown for arriving at dead of night and nearly frightening Mr Twite into convulsions. And even then I’m not sure the room’s free. What do you say, Mr Twite?’

  Mr Twite had calmed down as soon as his lady entered, and had wandered to a corner where he stood balancing himself alternately on his toes and his heels, singing in a plaintive manner:

  ‘Picts and pixies, come and stay, come and stay, Come, come, and pay, pay, pay.’

  When his wife asked his opinion he answered, ‘Oh, very well, my dear, if he has money he can stay. I’ve no objection if you are satisfied. What is a Pict or two under one’s roof, to be sure?’

  Simon handed over the extra half-crown and was just about to raise the matter of Dr Field when Mr Twite burst into song again (to the tune, this time, of ‘I had a good home and I left’) and carolled:

  ‘A Pict, a Pict, she rented the room to a Pict, And I think she ought to be kicked.’

  ‘Come along, my dove,’ he said, interrupting himself. ‘The Pict wants to get some sleep and I’m for the downy myself.’ Picking up the candle he urged his wife to the door.

  ‘I thought you wanted to commune with Nature,’ she said acidly, pocketing the money.

  ‘Nature will have to wait till the morning,’ Mr Twite replied, with a magnificent gesture towards the window, which had the unfortunate effect of blowing out the candle. The Twites made their way downstairs by the glow of the warming-pan.

  Simon an
d the kitten settled to sleep once more and there were no further disturbances.

  2

  WHEN SIMON WOKE next morning he lay for a few minutes wondering where he was. It seemed strange to wake in a bed, in a room, in the middle of a city. He was used to waking in a cave in the woods, or, in summer, to sleeping out under the trees, being roused by the birds to lie looking up at the green canopy overhead. He felt uneasy so far away from the grass and trees of the forest home where he had lived for the past five years.

  Outside in the street, he could hear wheels and voices; the kitten was awake and mewing for its breakfast. After Simon had fed it with the last of the milk, he wandered across the landing to the empty room and gazed out of the window. The tide was nearly full and the Thames was a bustle of activity. Simon watched the shipping, absorbed, until a whole series of church clocks striking culminated in the solemn boom of St Paul’s itself, and reminded him that he could not stand here all day gazing while time slipped by. It was still needful to discover Dr Field’s whereabouts, and to earn some money.

  Kind, wealthy Sir Willoughby Green, who had befriended Simon in Yorkshire, had offered to pay his art-school fees, but Simon had no intention of being beholden if he could avoid it, and proposed to look for work which would provide enough money for his tuition as well as food and rent. He had a considerable fund of quiet pride, and had purposely waited to leave Willoughby Chase until the Green family were away on a visit. Thus he had been spared a sad farewell, and had also avoided the risk of hurting Sir Willoughby’s feelings by refusing the money which he knew that liberal-hearted gentleman would have pressed on him.

  Munching a piece of bread, Simon tucked the kitten into the bosom of his frieze jacket; then he ran softly downstairs. The house was silent – evidently the Twites were still asleep. Simon resolved that he would not wait till they woke to question them about Dr Field, but would go to the Academy of Art which he was to attend – where Dr Field also studied – to ask for the doctor’s address. Unfortunately Simon did not know the name of the Academy, but he remembered that it was in Chelsea.

  He stole past the closed doors of the Twites, resolving that when he returned in the evening he would move the furniture from the room where he had slept into the one overlooking the river; it had a pleasanter view, and appeared to be in a superior state of cleanliness.

  Opening the front door Simon found Dido Twite sitting on the front steps, kicking her heels discontentedly. She was wearing the same stained dress that she had had on yesterday, and did not appear to have washed her face or brushed her hair since Simon had last seen her.

  ‘Hallo!’ she said alertly. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Out,’ said Simon. He had no intention of retailing all his doings to her and having them discussed by the Twite family.

  Dido’s face fell. ‘What about my donkey-ride?’ she said, looking at him from under where her brows would have been had she had any.

  Although she was an unattractive brat, she had such a forlorn, neglected air that Simon’s heart softened. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll get Caroline and give you a ride if you’ll do something for me while I’m fetching her.’

  ‘What?’ said Dido suspiciously.

  ‘Wash your face.’ He went whistling up the street.

  After he had given Dido her ride he asked, ‘What time is your father likely to get up?’

  ‘Not till noon – perhaps not till three or four. Pa works evenings and sleeps all day – if Penny or I wake him he throws his hoboy at us.’

  Simon could not imagine what a hoboy might be, but it seemed plain that no information was to be had from Mr Twite until the evening.

  ‘Well, goodbye. I’ll see you when I come home. What do you do with yourself all day? Do you go to school?’

  ‘No,’ she said peevishly. ‘Sometimes Pa teaches me the hoboy or Aunt Tinty sets me sums. Uncle Buckle used to teach me but he doesn’t any more. Mostly I does tasks for Ma – peel the spuds, sweep the stairs, stoke the furnace –’

  ‘Furnace!’ exclaimed Simon. ‘That was the name!’

  ‘What name?’

  ‘Oh, nothing that concerns you. The Principal of the Art Academy where I am to learn painting.’

  He had thrown the information over his shoulder as he walked away, not thinking that it could be of any possible interest to Dido Twite. He would have been surprised to see the sudden flash of alert calculation in her eyes.

  Simon asked his way through the streets till he reached Chelsea – no very great distance, as it proved. Here he inquired of a man in the uniform of a beadle where he would find an Academy of Art presided over by a Dr Furnace.

  The beadle scratched his head.

  ‘Dr Furnace?’ he said. ‘Can’t say as I recall the name.’

  Simon’s heart sank. Was Dr Furnace to prove as elusive as Dr Field? But then the beadle turned and shouted, ‘Dan!’ to a man who was just emerging from an arched gateway leading a horse and gaily painted dustcart with a cracked wheel.

  ‘Hallo?’ replied this man. ‘What’s the row?’

  ‘Young cove here wants Furnace’s Art Academy. Know what he means?’

  Both men turned and stared at Simon. The man called Dan, who was dressed in moleskin clothes from cap to leggings, slowly chewed a straw to its end, spat, and then said:

  ‘Furnace’s Academy? Ah! I knows what he means. He means Rivière’s.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the beadle wisely. ‘That’s what you mean, me boy. You means Rivière’s.’

  ‘Is that far from here?’ said Simon, his hopes rising.

  ‘Matter o’ ten minutes’ walk,’ said Dan. ‘Going that way meself. I’ll take you.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  They strolled off, Dan leading the horse.

  ‘I’m going to me brother-in-law’s,’ Dan explained. ‘Does the smithying and wheelwrighting for the parish. Nice line o’ business.’

  Simon was interested. He had worked for a blacksmith himself and knew a fair amount about the wheelwright’s trade.

  ‘There must be plenty of customers for a wheelwright in London,’ he said, looking about him. ‘I’ve never seen so many different kinds of carriages before. Where I come from it’s mostly closed coaches and farm carts.’

  ‘Countryfied sort o’ stuff,’ said Dan pityingly. ‘No art in it – and mind you, there’s a lot of art in the coachmaker’s trade. You get the length without the ’ighth, it looks poky and old-fashioned, to my mind, but, contrariwise, you get the ’ighth without enough body and it looks a reg’lar hurrah’s-nest. Now there’s a lovely bit o’ bodywork – see that barouche coming along – the plum-coloured one with the olive-drab outwork? Ah, very racy, that is – Duke o’ Battersea’s trot-box; know it well. Seen it at me brother-in-law’s for repair: cracked panel.’

  Simon turned and saw an elegantly turned-out vehicle in which was seated an elderly lady dressed in the height of fashion with waterfalls of diamonds ornamenting her apple-peel satin gown, and a tremendous ostrich-plume head-dress. She was accompanied by a pretty young girl who held a reticule, two billiard-cues, a large shopping basket, and a small spaniel.

  ‘Why!’ Simon exclaimed. ‘That’s Sophie!’

  His voice rang across the street and the young girl turned her head sharply. But just then a high closed carriage came between Simon and the barouche and, a succession of other traffic following after, no second view of the girl could be obtained.

  ‘I know that girl! She’s a friend of mine!’ Simon said, overjoyed. He looked at Dan with shining eyes.

  ‘Ah, Duchess’s lady’s-maid, maybe? Nice-looking young gel. Very good position – good family to work for. Duke very affable sort o’ gentleman – when he comes out o’ those everlasting experiments of his. Bugs, chemicals, mice – queer set-out for a lord. But his lady’s a proper lady, so I’ve been told. O’ course young Lord Bakerloo ain’t up to much.’

  ‘Where does he live – the Duke of Battersea?’ asked Simon, who had not been paying
much attention.

  ‘Battersea Castle o’ course – when the family’s in London. Places in the country too, nat’rally. Dorset, Yorkshire – that where you met the gel? Now, here’s me brother-in-law’s establishment, and, down by the river, that big place with the pillars is Rivière’s.’

  Dan’s brother-in-law’s place was almost as impressive as the Art Academy beyond. Inside the big double gates (over which ran the legend ‘Cobb’s Coaches’ in gold) was a wide yard containing every conceivable kind of coach, carriage, phaeton, barouche, landau, chariot, and curricle, in every imaginable state of disrepair. A shed at the side contained a forge, with bellows roaring and sparks blowing, while elsewhere lathes turned, carpenters hammered, and chips flew.

  ‘Do you suppose I could get work here?’ Simon asked impulsively. ‘Of an evening – when I’ve finished at the Academy?’

  ‘No ’arm in asking, is there? Always plenty to do at Sam Cobb’s, that I do know. Depends what you can do, dunnit?’

  Dan led his dustcart through the gates and then lifted up his voice and bawled, ‘Sam!’

  A large, cheerful man came towards them.

  ‘Why, bless me!’ he exclaimed. ‘If it’s not old Dan back again. I don’t know what you do to your cart, Dan, I don’t indeed. I believe it’s fast driving. I believe you’re out of an evening carriage-racing on the Brighton road. You can’t expect the parish dustcarts to stand up to it, Dan, no you can’t, me boy.’

  Dan took these pleasantries agreeably, and asked after his sister Flossie. Then he said, ‘Here’s a young cove, Sam, as wants a bit of evening work. Any use to you?’

  ‘Any use to me?’ said Mr Cobb, summing up Simon with a shrewd but friendly eye. ‘Depends what he can do, eh? Looks a well-set-up young’ un. What can you do, young’ un? Can you carpenter?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Simon.

  ‘Done any blacksmith’s work?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Simon.

  ‘Used to horses?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Simon

  ‘Ever tried your hand at ornamental painting?’ said Mr Cobb, gesturing towards a little greengrocer’s cart, newly and beautifully ornamented with roses and lettuces. ‘This sort o’ thing? Or emblazoning?’ He waved at a carriage with a coat-of-arms on the panel.