by Carol Hedges
***
No doors are being slammed in Belinda Kite’s face. Quite the opposite. It is still dark, tinted with the promise of dawn, as she dismounts from the cab carrying her back from a night of passion with her handsome lover.
Awoken to the demanding music of physical desire, Belinda Kite is greedy for all that life is now showing her. She is young and vital: she believes in the power of true love.
She also believes in wonderful things, including that amazing marriages can happen. Why not? She reads of them every day in the novels she finds in Sissy’s bookcase: Young Lord Whatshisname falls in love with Miss Nobody, whose charm and beauty captivates his heart so much that he spurns the rich heiress his family has chosen for him in favour of the poor girl who has won his undying affection.
It is fiction, but then from an early age Belinda Kite has made up stories about herself to survive. The life she now lives as the daughter of a French Marquis is a story. Her résumé is all fiction. She believes totally in the power of make-believe. This is what has got her to where she is today.
She walks up the front path, telling herself that Mark Hawksley is rich. He clearly finds her enchanting. Why should she not hope for more? Much more? She steps up to the front door. Wait till he sees her in the new dress, she thinks gleefully. He won’t be able to resist her.
She unlocks the door and goes in. The servants have left a candle on the hall table. She lights it, and sees, by the flickering flame, that lying next to the candle-holder there is a letter with her name on it. The envelope has a black border.
Mystified, Belinda picks it up and carries it and the candle up to her room, where she sits down on her bed, opens the letter and reads:
My dear Miss Kite,
It is with heavy heart that I take up my pen to inform you that my beloved sister Grizelda has suffered a terrible accident. Three days ago, while traversing the main high street, she was knocked down and trampled by a pair of carriage horses that had been panicked by a loud gunshot.
Her suffering, I am reliably told by the doctor who attended her, was brief, and she died at home of her injuries. She was the best sister a brother could have, always kind, and always believing well of every person she met.
Her death will be a great loss to me personally, as well as to the friends she had here and in London – in which capacity I include you, Miss Kite, as you made her short stay in the city so very pleasant.
I shall not be returning to London. I have the funeral arrangements to make, of course, and the trip was mainly to cheer my poor sister after her great disappointment. The rent on the house is paid until the end of December, and you are welcome to live there until then in lieu of wages.
Please do not hesitate to apply to me when you have found another position. I shall be happy to furnish you with a good testimonial.
I remain,
Yours sincerely,
Josiah Bulstrode
For a couple of seconds, Belinda Kite cannot quite take in what she has just read. It pulls her abruptly away from the happiness she feels, from the future life she was imagining for herself, and takes her straight back to that other time when she was always looking over her shoulder, waiting for the next setback or the next desertion.
She folds up the letter and places it on her night table. Tomorrow she will write a letter of condolence to Josiah, for whom she feels genuine sadness. She didn’t warm to Sissy, but his devotion to her was never in question.
She still has a roof over her head, albeit a temporary one, she reflects, as she pinches out the candle and settles back on her pillow. And at least she won’t have to go into black.
***
Belinda Kite opens her eyes. It is early morning. For a moment, she lies in her warm bed, thinking contented thoughts. Then she remembers the letter from Bulstrode, and the doubts (that are never far from her mind) return to trouble her.
If she doesn’t find another situation … If Mark Hawksley fails to live up to expectations … Once again, her life is at the behest of others, over whom she has very little control.
Belinda gets up and throws back the curtains. There are frost patterns on the window. Perfect crystalline symmetries. They remind her of the diamonds she saw in the jeweller’s showroom. The diamonds she has promised herself she will own one day.
She puts on her morning wrapper and makes her way downstairs. Breakfast is laid in the dining room. She helps herself to bacon, eggs and toast while she works out what she is going to say to the servants later.
After eating her breakfast, she sits down at the writing-desk and composes a suitably sorrowful letter to her former employer, and a slightly less sorrowful one to Hawksley informing him of the contents of Josiah’s letter.
It is nearly noon by the time she sets out to post both letters. It is also Sunday, and the city has a shut-down air. The shops are closed, the streets deserted. The smog cuts off emptiness from emptiness. London feels like a ruined place, all darkened brick and ashlar stone.
After posting her letters she decides, upon a whim, to keep walking.
She passes rows of small terraces with drawn blinds and smoke-blackened walls. Someone has hung a cage of finches from an upper storey: she hears their tiny piping me-me. A woman sings to the rhythm of her work. A swarm of ragged children hurtle round a corner, parting like a wave in the sea as they pass by on either side of her.
London is an easy place to get lost in. It has no centre. The streets lead off one another. They enclose and then enclose again, like a system of Chinese boxes, opening one into another, the perspectives endlessly changing.
Step away from the main thoroughfare, and the city changes into small unnamed footstreets, now full of shuttered small businesses: pawnbrokers, muffin-bakers, makers of incorrodible teeth, and a locked washhouse.
Belinda rounds a corner to discover an old man in a battered top hat and filthy coat turning the handle of a hurdy-gurdy for three little barefoot girls, who hop and skip solemnly in time to the music.
The air smells of alcohol and rotten oranges. Around another corner she finds herself in a dead-end alleyway full of rubbish, rotting meat, and a sad little heap of dead kittens.
Recoiling, Belinda retraces her steps and starts walking back the way she has come. This is where she might end up, if things don’t work out for her. She stumbles over a loose cobblestone and almost falls.
For a split second, she feels the old despair rise up inside her, but she forces it down. She reminds herself that this is the greatest city in the world. Full of opportunities and amazing possibilities. She is Belinda Kite, and just around the next corner something marvellous is waiting for her.
***
Monday morning, and the only thing that is currently waiting for Detective Inspector Stride as he arrives at Scotland Yard is a load of aggravation. This takes the form of a small crowd gathered outside the building, and Richard Dandy, chief reporter on The Inquirer, who is busy handing out business cards to them.
The crowd has “Rent-A-Mob” written all over it. The people are the sort that can be guaranteed to materialise out of nowhere whenever something happens. It is a constant mystery to Stride how they actually know what has happened and where to assemble. But they do and here they are. Stride even recognises a few familiar faces. Dandy spots Stride and raises his voice.
“Here he is, gents and ladies. Morning, Stride – I see the police force are once again failing to protect the man in the street’s property from wanton vandalism.”
Sensing blood, the crowd begins backing up behind him.
“On the contrary, Mr Dandy,” Stride retorts, pushing past and holding his breath to avoid the strongly-scented cologne. “My men have been working steadily and diligently behind the scenes, gathering evidence and conducting interviews, and we expect to make some arrests imminently.”
Dandy pauses, mid-scribble.
“How imminently?”
“Very imminently. And now if you wouldn’t mind, gentlemen – and Mrs Curva
ge, how nice of you to put in an appearance once again – I need to go and brief my officers.”
The crowd parts, still muttering, but now with a side order of added interest.
Dandy attaches himself to Stride’s wake.
“Are you going to give us a tip, then?”
Stride turns.
“My tip to you, Mr Dandy, is to use less of that foul cologne. Good day.”
He hurries into the building, where Jack Cully is waiting for him to arrive.
“I heard what you said,” Cully remarks. “Is it true?”
Stride makes a seesaw motion with his right hand.
“Yes and no. The men watching Millbank Tendring’s house have reported a bit of coming and going. Paint pots being brought round and taken way again. It looks as if something is being planned. I’m going to put young Evans in charge tonight. Time the lad had a bit of a chance to show us what he’s made of.”
Cully raises his eyebrows.
“Oh, I shall be there in the background, don’t worry.”
“I think it’s a full moon tonight,” Cully observes.
“Yes,” Stride says drily. “That sounds about right.”
***
Emily Cully has packed her basket and is on her way to visit her latest client for a first fitting. The elaborate dress is coming along well and she is pleased with its progress. Today she is walking – saving the omnibus fare so that she can buy something to eat later. It is a cold morning, and she is grateful for the warm shawl her late parents bought her as a wedding gift.
A phaeton passes, heading south towards the river. At its window, a sudden flash of bright colour. A young woman’s clothes. Emily glanced up as it passes, and smiles. She has never lost her love of bright colours, but they are not practical in her line of work.
She stops at the corner of Tottenham Court Road to buy a cup of coffee from one of the stall-holders, remembering how Jack bought her coffee and a ham sandwich the first time they met – that sad day when she learned that her friend Violet had been brutally murdered.
How kind he was to her then. How kind he still is. She hears the street gossip about husbands who come home drunk, beat their wives, demand their ‘rights’. She has been lucky. Her lines have fallen in a pleasant place.
Emily crosses the street, imagining it full of all the good people who have brought her to this point in her life, letting the memories come flooding back. She had once promised herself that she would never forget, that she would always hold them in her heart.
But time goes on, and the world fills up with other things to remember, other things to do, other calls on her time – and it becomes too easy to forget the things that are important, the real things. Now she recalls their faces one by one, ending with the face of dear Violet. They have all stayed with her, although she will never see most of them again.
***
It is one of those London nights when the rain is endless and the street lights are brightened by the reflections of water. The sort of night when sensible people and prospective criminals decide to stay indoors.
Detective Inspector Stride stands in the lee of a doorway watching the empty street, across which the rain is marching like an invading army.
Water swirls round his boots and drips off his cape. In theory, he should be feeling miserable as sin. It is three in the morning. He is wet, alone and cold. Yet Stride is, albeit temporarily, a happy man.
He’s spent some of the best nights of his career like this, he reflects. On a rainy night like this you could just wrap yourself up, pull your head in and become almost invisible. A little hunch of warmth, your mind just ticking over and putting the world to rights.
In the old days, when Stride was just a lowly beat constable, nobody cared about what you were up to; you were just boots on the ground. All you really had to do was keep out of trouble and be seen apprehending the odd criminal. Now, everything was bigger, more important, and came with added responsibilities.
A gust of wind catches the water pouring from a leaky gutter and dumps it down Stride’s neck. Somewhere up ahead there is a sudden crash, followed by a scream.
Stride, like most of his colleagues, has learned over the years to be good at interpreting screams. To the connoisseur there’s a world of difference between I’m drunk and I’ve fallen over and bitten my tongue and Aarrgh, he’s got a knife.
He starts running.
***
Since her first induction into the art of lovemaking, Belinda Kite is rapidly becoming quite the expert. Hawksley teases her that under his tutelage she can now sip champagne in such a way as to make it seem like a powerful aphrodisiac.
The arrival of Josiah’s letter has freed her from the drudgery of being a paid companion, and with no threat of her employer’s imminent return she has seen her handsome lover most days. Sometimes she meets him in town for luncheon; sometimes a cab comes for her in the early evening and she is transported to the small quiet hotel that he has moved into, where a dainty supper and other entertainment awaits.
Now he lies in her arms, spent and satisfied. His head is pillowed on her firm young breasts. Her legs are wrapped around his thighs. She stirs and utters a little sigh. Hawksley looks up at her with an expression of sleepy amusement.
“What are you thinking about, my Belinda of the Autumn curls?”
“My new dress. The dressmaker came yesterday for a fitting. It is going to be so lovely.”
“And when it is finished, I shall take you out to the finest restaurant in London and show you off to the world, as I promised.”
He runs a finger down her soft arm. She shivers.
“And I was thinking about the diamonds.”
“You are always thinking about them. Aren’t the earrings I gave you enough?”
Enough for now.
“I was wondering about all those big diamonds lying in your diamond mines. When are they going to be dug up?”
He laughs, raises himself on one elbow, and eyes her speculatively. Then he sits up, draws her closer, and whispers in her ear.
“Can you keep a very big secret, Belinda Kite?”
She nods. She can. She is good at keeping secrets. After all, her whole life is a secret that she has been keeping for a long time.
So he tells her. About how he thought up the idea of a fake diamond mine. About the public meetings he arranges to sell the concept; about the way people fall over themselves to buy shares.
“People are greedy. They want to get rich quickly without any effort on their part. I have merely offered them the chance to do exactly what they want,” he tells her.
She stares into his face, her eyes wide with amazement.
“But the Queen – surely she is not part of this?”
He laughs fondly.
“Oh, my dear sweet innocent little love – of course there is no Queen. Just a workhouse washerwoman whom one of my men discovered by accident. She bears a striking likeness to our beloved monarch. Remember, as you yourself pointed out, I never actually say that the Queen herself will be present.”
“And the diamond you showed to everyone at the first meeting?”
“Glass, my dear.”
Her head is spinning.
“So – is nobody going to make any money?”
“Well, I am. Indeed, I have already made a great deal of money. It is all locked securely in a cash box under the bed. Apart from what I give to my special girl to spend on clothes and such, of course.”
“But what happens when you are found out?”
“If, my pet, not when. And if that ever looks like happening, I shall just change my name and quit these shores and live somewhere else. Italy, perhaps? Or Greece? It is always warm there, and there is ample wine.”
She can barely take it in, her mind is whirling.
“There now,” Hawksley says. “No more questions.” He yawns, pulls her closer. “Let us sleep. You have quite worn me out, my greedy little girl.”
He slips into a deep conte
nted sleep.
But Belinda Kite cannot sleep. She remains wide awake and lying on her back, her fingers latched behind her head, just staring and staring at the ceiling.
Later, back home, what stays with her is his voice. She thinks of it again in the dark, in her own room which could be anywhere, any time. Her arms close around herself like a lover.
It feels to her as if everything is suddenly unreal, as if her happiness has shifted, and a door has been opened onto a place where she is a stranger who does not know the rules. There is a tightness in her chest. She has been here before; she has never been here before.
***
Stride runs down a side street, ducks through an alley and arrives in one of the squares that are made up largely of lawyers’ offices. Sergeant Evans is standing in front of some railings from which a man is suspended, upside down.
The man appears to be caught by the bottom of his jacket. There is a pot of paint at the foot of the railings, and a small Jack Russell is barking furiously and trying to bite his dangling arms.
Evans turns as Stride come up.
“Good evening, sir. A wet night, isn’t it? I seem to have found this gentleman in pursuit of some night painting.”
Stride regards the upside-down culprit thoughtfully.
“Well, well. You are in a bit of a predicament, sir. Good thing we came by. Looks like it’s your lucky night.”
A nervous expression flits across the man’s face. Unless the person saying it is wearing a low-cut dress and an accommodating smile, nobody likes being told it’s their lucky night. When someone tells you it’s your lucky night, you just know something unlucky is about to happen.
Stride and Evans unhook the man and set him on his feet. The dog stops barking and sits down on the pavement, regarding the trio with a look of canine disdain.
The man stares incredulously at his two rescuers.