by Alex Reeve
I wish you well, now and always.
Augustus
That was it; terse and to the point.
Major Augustus Thorpe. I’d never heard of him. I’d met customers at the brothel occasionally in passing, hateful men, entirely mercantile, sorting through their pockets for change as if they were paying to have their shoes shined. I’d sometimes heard them too, grunting like foraging pigs or murmuring about their wife who nagged them or their mother who’d never loved them.
I had written many letters to Maria, two dozen at least, on cheaper paper but with longer sentences, and adjectives, so many adjectives, like joyous and beautiful and, my most common, my all-time favourite: eternal. Oh, joyous, beautiful, eternal love! When I fell in love with Maria it wasn’t a tentative step, I flung myself from the precipice. Who was this Augustus Thorpe, with his stiff formality, citing her circumstances as if they were an accident of fate, a thing he couldn’t have anticipated? The only adjective he seemed to know was impossible.
I felt as if I had swallowed a lump of clay. I had told Maria everything about myself, and yet she hadn’t even told me her real name. And now here was this soldier, who she had met for these past months for intimate walks in the park. Perhaps he was the one she loved. After all, it was his letter, not mine, tucked inside that doll’s dress, worn down by overuse, treasured.
Where were my letters, my passionate, florid, adjective-filled letters?
They were nowhere.
I worked that night in a distracted and irritable fashion, only realising on my way home that I’d delivered Doctor Anderton’s mail to Doctor Anderson. But there was nought I could do about it now, and it was their own fault for having such similar names.
After a terrible morning of sleep, three hours at most, I sat alone in the back room. Constance was at her school on Dean Street, and Alfie was minding the shop and finishing the assembly of the contraption he’d acquired, which had taken four men to deliver.
I liked the back room. It was always changing: boxes of stock piled up and slowly emptying, jars of chemicals spilling over in dusty swirls, and our footprints criss-crossing on the floor, a diary of our day.
That morning it also housed the tin bathtub that was generally kept in the yard. Alfie loved to bathe, invisible in the steam but for the beacon of his cigar, telling ribald stories of his army days and laughing until he couldn’t speak. I envied him that bathtub; my washing was limited to a flannel and a bowl in my room. As a child I’d loved the sound of water being poured in, the smell of soap, the ceremony of the kettle, my mother towelling Jane so vigorously you’d think she was trying to rub off her skin. I’d lie there for hours, my head poking out of the grey water or sinking below the surface into that misty, silent world, my hair floating in front of my eyes. I was at home underwater. No one could be cross with me there. No one could tell me to take care of my fingernails or keep my knees together or sit with my back straight.
But I wasn’t a child any longer, and I had no Mummy to tell me to scrub the mud off my knees. I was a man now, and had to choose my own path.
Madame Moreau might be guilty of the crime. I didn’t know for sure that she wasn’t. And yet, deep down, I didn’t believe it. She seemed to care about Maria, and there was something else – she could’ve told the police about me at any time to deflect attention away from herself. It would have been easy. But she hadn’t. That counted in her favour.
Still, there was a very good chance she would be hanged. The police had extended their meagre imaginations no further than a woman with a French name whose profession fairly guaranteed no public sympathy. They’d rather hang her and be done with it than face the toil of finding out what had actually happened. They certainly wouldn’t be interrogating a major in the British Army.
I poured out a cup of tea, wrapping my hands around the pot until the heat was too much, and then just a little longer, eyes closed, feeling my skin begin to burn.
Could Thorpe have been the father of Maria’s pregnancy? It made me feel sick just thinking about it. If so, his letter of rejection was probably why she’d gone to Madame Moreau. She would be worthless to Elizabeth Brafton large with child.
I had to speak to Thorpe. But how?
I could imagine the letter I might write: Dear Major Thorpe, the prostitute you were visiting has been murdered, and I suspect you’re guilty of the crime. Could we meet to discuss it please? Yours sincerely, someone you’ve never heard of.
I sipped my tea. Try as I might, I could only think of one other approach, and truly, it was the most abhorrent idea I’d ever had. Anything but that. Please, God, if you ever thought of me as more than a plaything for Your cruel amusement, find me any other way than that.
14
My sister Jane lived in a three-storey townhouse on Maida Vale, less than an hour’s walk north-east from the pharmacy. It wasn’t a journey I made often. She was the one person I still knew who had known me before I was Leo, and I didn’t like being reminded of it. Neither did she.
Her door was opened by a Negress in a mob cap.
‘I’m here to see Mrs Hemmings.’
‘No salesmen,’ she said in a thick accent, starting to close the door.
‘She’s my sister.’
She looked me up and down, visibly unconvinced. ‘You’d better wait here.’
She shut the door, and I peered in through the stained-glass window at the hall. There was a pedestal table in the corner that I was sure had been in our childhood house in Enfield. It was always so easy for Jane. She wanted for herself exactly what our parents had wanted for her, and they had loved her for it: a nice house with bay windows and a covered porch, and a nice husband with a suitable position. And most importantly of all, as many offspring as a single womb could gestate.
Needless to say, I had never been gifted any furniture. She was their beloved daughter, and I was nobody’s son.
After a few moments, Jane opened the door and the smile died on her lips. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said. ‘I thought it was Ollie.’
‘Can I come in?’
‘Howard isn’t here.’ She was a respectable woman, and wouldn’t want the neighbours seeing a man enter the house while her husband was out. I’d never met the fellow, a banker in the City apparently. ‘What do you want? I told you before, I won’t give you any more money.’
‘It’s not that.’
How typical of her to remind me. I had needed some funds at twenty-one years old, in debt and with some delinquent habits, having recently discovered my mother had died. Who else should I have turned to but my sister? She acted now as if I was almost a stranger, but we’d shared a bedroom for fifteen years, out of preference. We’d lain awake at night talking in the pitch black until all there was in the world was her voice, so close it could have been inside my head. I had curled up beside her when I suffered nightmares, fought like a feral cat over the encroachment of her clothes on to my side of the wardrobe, applauded while she practised her pliés and woken her up almost every morning by throwing open the curtains, upholding a younger sibling’s right to be infuriating. She was the first person I had told I was really a boy, and the first to berate me for being so stupid.
In the house, a baby started to cry. Jane stepped back into the hall. ‘Cecily!’ I could hear the maid making soothing noises.
‘Another one?’
It showed how long it was since I’d last seen my sister. Almost a year, I thought.
‘Yes. A girl. Two of each now.’
The immutability of her children’s genders hung between us.
‘You look well,’ I said. This much was true. She was almost as tall as me, clean, well-fed and pleasantly dressed. But I knew her secret, just as she knew mine.
‘I can’t say the same for you. Have you taken up boxing now?’
‘No, it’s just a bruise.’ I had hoped it had started to fade.
‘Are you still at the hospital?’ This, again, was a laden question, a reminder of her previous generosity.
After she’d lent me the money, she’d told me about the cousin of a friend of hers who had recently left the post of junior porter, creating a vacancy. That was all she’d done, but the way she acted you’d think she’d secured the position for me personally. I always suspected she did it not out of any sisterly affection, but so I’d have the means to repay her, even though she certainly didn’t need the money.
‘Yes, I’m still assistant to a surgeon,’ I lied. ‘I have a home and friends. I have a good life.’ In for a penny, in for a pound.
‘Do they know what you are, Lottie?’
‘They know I’m a man, and my name is Leo.’
The wailing continued. I would’ve liked to meet my new niece, but that offer wasn’t made.
‘There was a pope called Leo who turned back Attila the Hun from Rome, did you know that?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘He unified the Catholic Church.’ I wasn’t clear whether she regarded this as a good thing or not, but anyway, she continued. ‘You were christened Charlotte, but you don’t call yourself Charles now. Why is that?’
‘I wanted a new name. Besides, I was always Lottie, never Charlotte.’
She knew this well enough. She resembled my mother physically, uncannily so, but she thought like my father. And me, if the truth was told. We didn’t agree on much, but we operated the same way; identical looms turning out different cloths.
‘Have you ever considered how similar Leo is to Lottie?’ she asked. ‘L and E and O, three letters the same. And three missing, T and I and another T. Interesting, isn’t it? You’ve half the name you had, and only a tit missing.’
I wasn’t so easily shocked or provoked. All she’d done was reveal a tiny fraction of her secret: she was, quite simply, the most intelligent person I’d ever known. I’d met doctors, lawyers and priests, and not one of them was fit to stand in her light. As a child I’d been obsessive about chess for a while, playing every minute I could, against my mother, my neighbours, the verger and various members of my father’s congregation, and I could defeat them all. I could beat Oliver too, or at least get ahead before he swept a fist across the board and stormed away, but I couldn’t compete with Jane. She could win without trying, reading a book at the same time, while I sat opposite her, fixated on the board, fuming and grinding my teeth.
I wondered whether she ever demonstrated that intellect to Howard, the banker. Somehow, I doubted it. What a waste. Both of us had changed, but I had become what I should always have been, and she had buried her true self.
‘How many books do you own?’ I asked abruptly.
‘We have a whole library,’ she replied, with the merest glint of amusement showing through her defences. This was an old lark between the two of us, to count the books in a household. Fewer than twenty and we despised the family as ignorant dullards. We were charmless children.
‘Are you allowed to read them?’
‘When time permits.’ Meaning when Howard wasn’t there, I presumed. ‘Are you here to discuss my reading habits?’
‘No. I need your help. I need to find a gentleman named Augustus Thorpe.’
She shrugged. ‘Is that it? Well that’s simple, I’ve never heard of him. Truly, Lottie, did you come all this way on the off-chance I might know this one fellow in the whole of London? What an idiotic excuse.’
‘I didn’t think you would know him. I thought Oliver would know him. Augustus Thorpe is a major at St George’s Barracks. Oliver’s still stationed there, isn’t he? It’s urgent I speak with Thorpe, so please ask him.’
She raised her eyebrows and didn’t say anything. The avenue was quiet aside from the wind in the trees lining the pavement and the distant clip-clopping of horses on the Edgware Road. Inside the house, my niece’s cries had been replaced by the whistling of a kettle.
A boy appeared in the doorway. At first I didn’t recognise him, but then realised this must be Walter, her eldest, who I still thought of as chubby and pink, barely able to talk. But here he was, at – goodness – eight or nine years old, with brushed hair, a long chin and blue eyes that showed no recognition of me.
‘Hello,’ I said.
‘Go inside,’ Jane told him, giving me a look straight from our childhood: don’t give away who you are. I wondered what her children and husband knew about me. I was sure the name Leo never came up, but what about Lottie? Was Auntie Lottie dead, or had she never existed at all?
I fumbled in my pocket for the note I’d brought with me. I’d lost too many games of chess to my sister not to prepare thoroughly. ‘Here’s my address,’ I said. ‘And my name: Stanhope, in case you’d forgotten. He should ask for me. And this is the name of the gentleman: Major Augustus Thorpe.’
She didn’t take the piece of paper. ‘It’s not me you need a favour from, it’s Ollie.’
‘You know he won’t talk to me.’
I had tried, a long time ago, but my letters were returned unopened.
She sighed. ‘What’s this all about anyway? Why do you need to speak to this gentleman?’
‘A young lady was murdered, and he knew her. The police already have someone in custody, so he’s not a suspect. But I’d like to ask him some questions.’
‘Murdered? What on earth have you got involved with?’ She was backing into the hallway, her hand reaching for the door.
‘Please, Jane. I would never put you in any danger, I just need Oliver to ask this man to get in touch with me. For the sake of the young lady who was killed, please be persuasive.’
Still, she didn’t take the paper. ‘Why should I? This has nothing to do with us.’
It was my turn to shrug. ‘I can come back tonight and ask again. And tomorrow if needs be.’
She knew what I meant: my nieces and nephews would meet their uncle for the first time, and I could introduce myself to Howard as well. I was sure he’d be interested to meet the brother-in-law he didn’t know he had.
The truth is, I wouldn’t have done it; the cost of her embarrassment might be my own imprisonment. But in my experience, threats were the only way to deal with her.
Finally, she took the paper. Checkmate, for once. ‘I’ll ask Ollie, but I can’t promise he’ll say yes.’
‘But you can promise you’ll try.’
‘I can and I do. But this is the last time I’ll help you. You can’t come here any more. We have neighbours and servants. We have standing. You’re not welcome here. Do you understand? Don’t come back.’
‘You’re my sister, Jane.’
‘It’s your own fault, Leo, so don’t blame me. I loved Lottie and I always will. I miss my sister every day.’
For a moment I said nothing, standing on her doorstep like a stranger. I was determined not to cry. ‘If that’s what you want, then all right. Send me a telegram. I’ll meet him anywhere he wishes, and at any time.’
She nodded and stepped back inside the house. ‘Goodbye,’ she said, and closed the door.
I had grown accustomed to not seeing Jane or thinking about her from day to day or week to week, but once upon a time I’d been more familiar with her voice than my own, and to know that it was lost to me, to know for certain, was hard to bear.
I felt empty, as if I was craving food but unable to tolerate it. After a day, my craving turned to resentment and then to anger. I’d been her ally when she’d confided how much she loathed our father and despised his endless pedagogy; everything we saw and every place we visited turned into a lesson complete with Bible quotes and a test, as though our lives were a metaphor for his Protestant religion rather than the other way round. But the truth was clear now. What went bone-deep for me was just the ink on her fingers, easily washed off.
In the end, she’d sided with him.
But still, when I lay on my bed unable to sleep, I couldn’t help but remember those summers in the vicarage, dancing around the garden flapping our arms, blessing the rhododendrons and peonies and the baby thrushes in our father’s nesting boxes. We’d held them in our hands an
d watched their tiny, pink beaks open and close. It was as if we’d given them life.
I took to hanging around the pharmacy before I left for the hospital. Business was, as Alfie called it, slack, meaning slack like a rope that would soon pull tight, but there wasn’t so much as a twitch as far as I could see. By late on Friday afternoon I’d only served three customers: an elderly woman buying arsenic for the rats, a tanner who bought the last box of salt and Miss Horner from the brewery, who came in for some carbolic after a drayman dropped a barrel on his foot and split the skin, she said, from small to big toe.
Meanwhile, Alfie was learning how to use his new contraption. It was a hideous thing – a chair, a footpump and various attached apparatus that he’d installed right in the centre of the shop – which was far too small for such a beast to be overlooked. He was practising his new craft on a pickled pig’s head. It was awful; the stink of pork and vinegar, the squeak of the pedal, the whirring of the gears and, worst of all, the insistent grinding of the drill on tooth enamel.
‘Dentistry is just engineering,’ he explained, exchanging the drill for a pair of pliers. ‘The machine does all the work. You just have to be careful not to slip and go into the soft parts of the mouth.’
He was hoping his new venture would attract more wealthy patrons to the pharmacy. I feared it would have the opposite effect, and that any customer seeking medicines would be discouraged by the sight of a man torturing a pig’s head clamped to a chair.
I was about to get my coat and go to work when the bell on the door rang.
I recognised the gentleman instantly. This was the man who’d been waiting outside the house of Madame Moreau, the man who’d sent in the little girl; too scared to go in himself. Close up, he was perhaps thirty years old, straight-backed, unmistakeably military though not in uniform. He blanched at the sight of the pig, but gathered himself.
Constance came in, and he examined her. ‘Are you Miss Pritchard? I was asked to come to this address.’
I knew immediately who he was. I could hear his voice in the letter: Your circumstances make it impossible. The pompous ass. I could hardly imagine he’d ever known Maria, let alone cared for her.