by Carol Hedges
“You were a married man when you came to my bed,” she retorts. “It did not seem to matter to you then.”
“That was a mistake. I have told you, over and over again, that I regret my behaviour. You were a very vulnerable woman, lately bereaved. I took advantage of your unfortunate state, and in a moment of weakness I allowed myself to behave in a way that I now deeply regret. I have explained all this to you. Why must you continue to pursue me in this unpleasant manner?”
“What kind of a man are you, Frederick? You did not answer my last letter. You have answered none of my recent letters.”
“I have received no communications from you, Marianne, I assure you.”
There is a pause, during which Marianne Corvid leans forward in her chair and scrutinises his countenance intently for a few seconds. Then she sits back with a sigh.
“No, I see from your face you have not read them, even though I sent them to your house. Then let me disclose to you the contents of my most recent letter: I told you that I needed to see you. And I needed to see you to tell you that I have recently lost a child.”
For a moment Frederick Undercroft does not seem to grasp what she has just told him. He frowns, tapping the end of a pencil upon the desk.
“I am sorry – I do not understand you, Marianne. What child? Where did you lose it?”
“My child. Our child. The child conceived from our brief time together.”
Now he understands. A look of utter horror crosses his sallow features.
“I don’t believe you!”
“It doesn’t matter whether you believe me or don’t believe me, it is nevertheless true. I was carrying your child. But I lost it. At the time, I was unable to summon medical assistance, for obvious reasons. The child was born so early that it stood no chance of surviving. That is what I wanted you to know. That is why I have come.”
Frederick Undercroft opens his mouth, then closes it again.
Marianne Corvid folds her black-gloved hands in her lap.
“I should now like to go abroad, to somewhere warm where I can recover my health and my strength. I have been unwell since I lost the child, and it is so cold here in England. I dread the winter. I believe another winter in London will kill me.”
“Then go. I am not stopping you.”
“I have insufficient funds to make such a journey,” she says.
She waits. He says nothing. His face betrays nothing.
“I thought you might provide me with a little money, given my unfortunate situation. And its cause.”
He rises.
“Mrs Corvid, as you have failed to supply me with any actual proof that the child – if indeed there ever was a child in the first place, which I doubt – was mine, I am afraid that I am both unable and unwilling to help you in any future plans. Now, if there is nothing more, I think we are done here. I have clients waiting. My clerk will show you out. Good day.”
She utters a low cry of despair. He stares fixedly down at the pile of folders on his desk, refusing to look her in the face.
“This is your final word, Frederick? You will not grant me the one last favour that I will ever beg of you?”
“I refuse to be compromised by the behaviour of a woman for whom I no longer have any regard or respect. I refuse to fall for your tricks. I see straight through them. You are trying to entrap me – it will not work. If you have suffered misfortune, then it has been of your own choice and volition. I repeat, I have clients waiting. Please go now. We have nothing further to say to each other.”
She rises, staggers, almost collapses. Then taking a deep breath, she pulls herself together, squares her slight shoulders, lifts her chin, and regards him with burning eyes.
“Shame on you, Frederick Undercroft! You have wronged me and you have ruined me. And one day, I pray with all my heart and soul, you will pay for what you have done.”
Then she is gone.
He stares at the space she has just quitted. A sense of immense relief overwhelms him. The idea that he could have fathered a child out of wedlock … The implications for his career, or his social standing in the legal community, hardly bear contemplating. But he has not. And so he will not contemplate it.
He rings the bell to summon the clerk.
“If that woman ever comes here again, you are to bar the door to her. Do you understand?”
The clerk understands only too well. He saw Marianne Corvid leaving the office, her face contorted by grief, her jaw clenched, her hands balled into fists. She bore all the appearance of a madwoman.
“Good. Now bring me Colonel Anstruther’s folder, if you please. His family will be arriving shortly to hear his Last Will and Testament.”
***
Meanwhile, in a dark alley where the sun never shines (or if it does, only with extreme caution), two groups of ragged street urchins face each other. Under layers of facial grime, their expressions are taut, their eyes narrowed and watchful.
Knuckles are whitened, boots are being scraped down walls – by those that have the luxury of a pair of boots, that is. The Commercial Road Killers and the Dockside Devils are about to engage each other in the time-honoured way of all street gangs everywhere.
At either end of the alley, piles of rags, stones and a dead dog mark the place where some goalposts might have been. An inflated pig’s bladder is carried into the alley by a boy whose swaggering walk indicates his elevated status in the gang hierarchy. This elevated status is also confirmed by his cap, and the fact that he possesses a marginally cleaner face, and boots with actual laces.
The game begins. What it lacks in finesse and gamesmanship it makes up for in sheer animal brutality and noise.
From time to time the ball is accidentally kicked out of the alley and into the main thoroughfare. When that happens, a shouting cursing group of boys rush after it and attempt to get it back, diving between the legs of passers-by and knocking them over.
Just as the game reaches its height, a small figure enters the alleyway. It is the Infant Prophet. He is dressed in white, his long fair hair tucked under a white cap. He carries a quartern loaf wrapped in waxed paper.
His arrival causes an immediate halt to the game. The boys stand and stare open-mouthed as he picks his way carefully along the filthy mud-encrusted alley. He seems oblivious to their presence, the expression on his face and the movement of his lips suggesting that he is communing with some Higher Presence. As he reaches the midpoint of the alley, a couple of the bigger boys step forward, arms folded, and bar the way.
“Oi, Whitey, where you goin’?” one of them demands.
The Infant Prophet regards them thoughtfully, but says nothing.
“I sed, where you goin’?” his interrogator, who goes by the name of Scummer, repeats, kicking muddy water at this fascinating new prey.
He stretches out a filthy hand, grabs the white cap from the Infant Prophet’s head and throws it into the air. It lands in a puddle.
Catcalls and jeers break out as the Infant Prophet’s long blond curls cascade down his back.
“Ferkin’ hell, wot is it?”
“He’s a gurl, innee?”
“Aww … lickle gurl … Let’s see wot he looks like under them pretty clothes, then.”
A chorus of “Off … off … off!” breaks out. Scummer holds the Infant Prophet down, while another boy known as Nosser begins to unbutton his tunic. The Infant Prophet grips his bread tightly to his chest, lifts his mud-spattered face to the heavens and begins to wail.
At which point Sergeant Evans, who just happens to be passing by, having checked on the men watching Murdoch’s Chandlery, is attracted by the howls and catcalls.
He sticks his head into the alleyway, makes a lightning assessment of the situation, and advances on the two boys closest to the Infant Prophet. Evans grabs them by their ragged collars and hoists them effortlessly aloft until their faces are level with his and their legs are dangling off the ground.
“Now then, Oliver and William – what�
�s going on here?”
The two boys exchange horrified glances. Nobody knows their real names. Nobody. Kids they grew up with don’t know their real names. The gangs they bunk down with under the tarpaulins in Covent Garden don’t know their real names. It is highly probable that their own mothers, who abandoned them at birth, have forgotten their real names. But somehow, Sergeant Evans has found out. Even though he has only been on their patch for a brief while.
“Nuffink, mister. We woz just having a bit of fun.”
“Doesn’t look like fun to me. I suggest you all cut along and play somewhere else, or I’m going to get cross and take your ball away. And you wouldn’t like that, would you?”
The boys mutter under their breath. Then they pick up their ragged possessions and edge away, trying to convey that wherever they are going, they were intending to go there all the time.
Sergeant Evans retrieves the Infant Prophet’s cap and wrings it out.
“I’m afraid your mother will have to wash this,” he says, shaking his head sadly.
The Infant Prophet sniffs, and stuffs the sodden cap into his coat pocket.
“Now then, my little boy, where do you live?” Evans asks.
The Infant Prophet winces, but tells him.
“Oh, that’s just a step from here, isn’t it? I’ll see you safe to your front door. Wouldn’t want any more harm to come to you, would we?”
Looking strangely incongruous, the pair traverse the alley, cross a couple of streets and come to a halt outside a rather dilapidated cottage fronting a less than fragrant drainage ditch.
Evans knocks on the door, which is opened by a pleasant-faced older woman wearing a sacking apron and a lace cap with old-fashioned lappets. Her expression changes as she catches sight of the Infant Prophet, who is trying to hide behind Sergeant Evans.
“Oh. my goodness! Look at the state of you! What has happened now?”
“A slight altercation with a group of boys,” Evans says, helping the sodden Infant Prophet over his doorstep by applying a large hand to the small of his back.
“No bones broken, and nothing a good scrub down won’t cure.”
The woman rolls her eyes.
“As if I didn’t have enough on my plate,” she mutters. “I dunno what your father will say about this, I really don’t. Fighting in the street – and you a Brand Plucked from the Burning!”
Sergeant Evans opens his mouth to explain, but the woman cuts him off.
“Thank you for bringing him back, mister,” she says, and slams the door.
Sergeant Evans shrugs, turns and makes his way back to the main road. As he walks back to Scotland Yard, he thinks about what he spied, albeit briefly, over the woman’s shoulder just before she closed the door.
There was a pot of paint in the hallway. A large pot, with a big brush balanced on the lid and a dribble of red paint running down the side.
***
Frederick Undercroft leaves his office promptly at five o’clock. He emerges cautiously, glancing round to see if she is lurking in some doorway ready to accost him once more with her mad fantasies.
Reaching Chalk Farm unmolested, he pauses to buy a copy of the evening paper from a newsvendor before striding up Haverstock Hill in the direction of Hampstead. He finds the evening paper useful as a screen between him and the misery-faced woman he is tied to.
Undercroft would have preferred to spend the evening in more convivial company at his club, or between the ample thighs of Hectorina Rose, but the visit from Marianne Corvid has unsettled him to such a degree that he feels unfit for anything but the lacklustre companionship of Georgiana.
Besides, there is a pressing matter he has to deal with.
He unlocks the front door, the action bringing the maid hurrying out of the parlour. He hands her his top hat and coat.
“Where is your mistress?”
“In the dining-room, sir. We were not expecting you home this evening.”
He pauses on the threshold.
“You pick up the letters, don’t you, Anna?”
“Most times, sir. Sometimes the mistress does it.”
“Do you recall any private letters arriving recently, addressed to me?”
She frowns.
“I think I recall a couple of letters, sir.”
“And what did you do with them?”
“Same as I always do. I took them in to the mistress,” the maid says. “Have I done something wrong, sir?”
He forces a smile between gritted teeth.
“Certainly not. Now get along with your work.”
Undercroft enters the dining-room. Georgiana is seated at one end of the oval dining table, a bowl of soup in front of her and a novel at her elbow. She glances up, raising her eyebrows in surprise.
“I was not expecting you, Frederick. Shall I ring the bell for some more soup?”
He sits down heavily, feeling a tightness in his chest. The long walk and the evening smog must have caused it, he thinks. And the unpleasant visit from Marianne. He pours himself a glass of water.
“Have you seen any letters arriving here, addressed to me personally?” he asks.
“Letters from whom?”
“A client of mine. An ex-client, I should say.”
She fixes her pale eyes upon his face.
“Why should an ex-client be writing to you here? Surely your chambers would be the appropriate place to send any such letters?”
He stares at her, trying to read behind the bland expression, the cold-eyed stare.
She must have intercepted Marianne’s letters, he thinks. Though the post is inconsistently reliable, he reminds himself. The maid could be mistaken.
“This particular person has become a little unhinged since the death of her husband. She has developed strange fancies. It is possible that she may have written in a strange and alarming way.”
“Really?” Georgiana props her chin on her hands. “What might she have written?”
He is being drawn into a trap – he sees it clearly.
“I am not at liberty to divulge client information,” he says, adopting his most pompous legal tone of voice. “I merely asked whether you had seen any letters.”
She continues spooning up her soup.
“You do not answer?” he says.
“What answer do you wish me to make? You clearly believe me culpable of hiding your private correspondence. Nothing I say will make any difference to that opinion, so I chose not to respond to your accusation. Now, if you will excuse me, I should like to finish my supper and continue with my book.”
He glares at her bent head. He would like to strike her, to take out on her all the frustration of the past few months. He reminds himself that he is the master of the house, the head of his chambers. It behoves him to behave with decorum. Nothing must ever get out into the public sphere where it could damage his reputation and ruin him forever.
“Did you meet with Regina Osborne today?”
This time she does not even raise her eyes from the novel.
“We met, briefly.”
“Good. Good. I would not like us to fall out with them. Old friends are the best after all.”
She rises from her seat.
“Is it your intention to stay here this evening?”
“I have not decided. I may do once I have eaten something.”
“I see. Then I shall tell Cook to serve you some soup. If you require my presence I shall be in my room.”
A swish of grey silk and she is gone, leaving the faint scent of lavender water behind her. He wrinkles his nose. He hates lavender, always has done. He decides he will go out after all.
Maybe a visit to the Argyll Rooms? He hasn’t been in a while. A couple of his friends go there regularly. There are always pretty girls, wearing low-cut dresses that show the full roundness of their breasts. And there will be dancing, and champagne.
He can drink and dance and maybe find himself an amiable woman to spend the night with. A woman with a voice s
oft as the cooing of turtle doves, and a body to match. He is a man, after all, with a man’s needs. And he has had a very trying day.
***
The Argyll Rooms, or the Gyll as it is known to regular patrons, is one of the most popular places of entertainment in London. It is situated in Great Windmill Street, next to a church and only a stone’s throw from the hub of the West End that is Piccadilly Circus.
Step over the threshold into the brilliantly-gaslit rooms whose walls are covered with large gilt mirrors in which you can see yourselves stretching away into infinity. A glass of champagne (only twelve shillings a bottle) in your hand, you can watch the dancing and flirting from the edge of the dance floor, or from one of the plush seats in the gallery, with its secluded alcoves.
The orchestra, who entertains from behind an elaborate screen of gold trellis-work, is about to play a polka. Pay your shilling and you can join the dance. Not got a partner? The master of ceremonies, dressed in white tie and tails, will select a suitable person for you and effect an introduction. For the Gyll is a well-run night spot, and certain conventions are enforced.
Look more closely. One of the men is known to you. Elegantly turned out in evening dress, Mark Hawksley has just been introduced to a very pretty blonde, dressed in blue to match her eyes. Her fair hair hangs in ringlets and her little slippered feet beat time to the music.
She has come up to London to ‘better herself’, and is here for excitement and in the hope of attracting some presentable and wealthy man who will stand her a dance and a supper, and then maybe take her back to his rooms afterwards. Ultimately, she has her eye on a nice little villa in Maida Vale or St John’s Wood.
They make an elegant couple as they spin round the floor, his hand in the small of her back, his eyes occasionally flicking down to her soft white bosom. When the dance ends, he conducts her to a table, where a glass of sherry-cobbler and two straws are waiting.
But Hawksley’s pretty partner is going to be disappointed in her elegant beau, for he is here to ingratiate himself with the older more prosperous city men (married, of course) who are here at the Gyll to pick up girls for a night’s pleasure.