by Maggie Joel
Thomas followed too, as swiftly as his injuries would allow. His anger was a hard bitter knot at his core. It seemed to narrow his focus and provide a clarity that was stark and vivid and bright.
‘That gentleman that just now left, what be his name?’ he inquired, out of breath and grabbing one of the protestors by the arm to get his attention.
‘That one’s Jarmyn,’ the man replied. ‘Mr Lucas Jarmyn. It was his father—Mr Jarmyn Senior, that is—who built the railway in the first place. He’s got a lot to answer for, I fancy.’ He paused to fix Thomas with a shrewd eye. ‘What’s your grievance, friend?’
Thomas ignored the question, partly because he had no answer for it and partly because his head was swimming and his vision blurred, but mainly because ahead of him was the man whose father had built the railway, walking briskly along Half Mitre Street, neatly side-stepping the various human and non-human obstacles in his way, his umbrella clicking on the road, and Thomas Brinklow set off after him.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
FOUR DAYS LATER, AND IN the hours immediately before her mother’s dinner party, Dinah went up to her room and, in a desperate act of subversion, pulled all the bones out of her corset.
She had not planned it as a desperate act of subversion, indeed she had not planned it at all. She had merely gone up to her room, retrieved the corset she was likely to be wearing that evening, taken up a pair of sewing scissors and cut through the threads holding the bones in place. She had then laid down the scissors, pulled out each piece of whalebone in turn and laid them in a circle at her feet. When she had done so, the corset had flopped into a helpless heap on the bed and Dinah had stood in the centre of the circle surrounded by the collection of bones that now resembled less an item of ladies’ intimate apparel and more an exhibit at the newly completed Museum of Natural History.
Afterwards she wondered at herself. One minute she had been sitting in the drawing room working on her embroidery and listening to her mother explain to Mrs Logan some necessary adjustment to the seating plan, the next she had found herself up in her room assailing her undergarments with a pair of scissors. She did not know herself.
She picked up the floppy remains of the corset and inspected it thoughtfully. It was still fully functional, except that it would no longer cut her in half and restrict her breathing and prevent her from eating more than three mouthfuls at dinner. Well, all to the good. It had, then, been a profitable five minutes—more profitable, at any rate, than working away at an endless piece of embroidery that she had begun on her twelfth birthday and that it seemed likely she would not complete by her twenty-second.
When Bill knocked and went into his sister’s room a few minutes later seeking assistance with his black tie, it was to find her seated on the floor surrounded by the internal organs of her most expensive corset. He raised a curious eyebrow but otherwise did not remark on it.
‘Help me with this blasted thing, can you, Dinah?’
For a moment she did not move, then she got up and came to his aid.
‘Why do you not get Father to help you?’ she asked, to which Bill offered no reply. She had tied her father’s black tie on occasion but it was the first time Bill had asked her and her fingers seemed unable to make sense of the task. Eventually she gave up on the tie and her arms fell limply to her sides.
‘Bill, do you think that people get punished whilst they are still on Earth—by God, I mean—if they do something bad?’
The words sounded odd, even to herself—not the sort of words she would usually speak—but they had grown and grown inside her like a balloon that someone was inflating, until she could no longer breathe. Until she had had to cut open her own corset to survive.
‘No,’ said Bill, fiddling with the tie.
His reply—so short, so utterly unequivocal—silenced her and she felt a kind of despair at them. ‘Well, but how can you be so certain?’ she pleaded.
He did not reply at once, then he turned around and said briskly, ‘Dinah, you are hardly ready yet! If you do not hurry Mama will be after you.’ And he left.
A light had gone out in the upstairs window of the house and Thomas Brinklow, watching from the mews below, imagined that a life had been extinguished. Not his own, for that had been extinguished six weeks ago, the very moment Alice had gone—her small, child’s body horribly mutilated—in his arms.
He closed his eyes and felt the pavement sink beneath him. It was a bitterly cold evening yet the moisture stood out on his forehead and upper lip and on the palms of both hands. He felt feverish and his head throbbed white hot like the molten iron that oozed from the blast furnace where he had worked since his thirteenth year but where he worked no more. He had to shake himself to clear his head of it.
He had been strong but some of that strength had deserted him. It was this city: it was a poison that got into his lungs and his bloodstream and into his very soul. It laid a veil over his eyes.
He had followed the gentleman whose father had built the railway, along crowded lanes and down into a brightly lit station beneath the street where he had bought a ticket so Thomas had bought a ticket too and he had travelled through a tunnel in an underground steam train, four stations, popping up, dazed and shaken, onto a quiet and tree-lined square. They had eventually come to this street: lined by narrow white-fronted, five-storey dwellings with black railings and blue front doors bordered on either side by pillars that ought to have fronted a municipal building or a railway terminus but here in London meant a rich gentleman’s house. Into one of these houses Mr Jarmyn had gone. Thomas had remained across the street and out of sight until nightfall, when hunger and despair had forced him back to the crowded streets and the omnibuses, where he had found a bed in a lodging house in the Temple, a nightmarish place, but it had meant he could write to his wife. There had not been much to report and he was not a letter-writer so he had barely filled a page relating an abridged version of his meeting with the railway people. He had provided her with his lodging house address, too, in case she felt moved to write back to him. He had written on Thursday night and posted the letter the following morning. Now it was Monday evening and he had returned each day to this quiet street off the quiet tree-lined square and watched the rich gentleman’s house, his bill from the funeral company in his pocket, the letter of condolence in his hand, but after four days he had done nothing and was no closer to knowing what he would do. Each day at nightfall he had left. But not tonight. Tonight he had remained.
When he opened his eyes the street and the house across the street were bathed red: a vivid, blood-streaked red, the same shade of red as the blood that had streamed from Alice’s tiny body as she had lain in his arms, the same red that had spilt from her mouth and down the front of her dress. He saw it when he slept. It was the colour of his dreams as though every day, now, was a spectacular scarlet sunset. But it was not spectacular; it was a vision of Hell.
He blinked, two, three times and the red subsided.
He had lost his job. There were plenty of other men, they had said, ready and waiting to take his place. So let them take his place. What was he working for, anyway, if it was not to put bread on the table for his wife and child?
The flickering glow of a candle was visible in one of the upstairs rooms of the house opposite and Thomas stirred, imagining Mr Jarmyn sitting in his study, or perhaps taking a glass of port wine or reading that morning’s Times. Reading, perhaps, of another railway accident on his railway line, shaking his head and turning over the page and taking a sip from his glass.
No, it was not a study. The light came from a bedroom for he could see a young lady, no more than seventeen or eighteen, standing in the window. She stood perfectly still, and the candle lit up her face and hair. She wore a gown of some soft grey shade that must surely be silk for the candlelight flickered and was reflected off it. Her arms hung loosely by her sides and she gazed ahead rather than down at the street, though what she could see in the distance on such a night, he cou
ld not imagine.
Like an angel.
The notion made him uneasy. It was not a word, an idea, that he had thought he had a use for any longer. He pushed the thought away and waited, for surely she could not stand there very long, but she remained in the window, unmoving, and Thomas remained in the street below, watching.
The day had darkened into night and the street was utterly still and silent, no soul stirred in any of the white-fronted houses, and yet there was something, some expectation in the air. All day deliveries had been made to the house.
At last the young lady in the window turned her head and blew out the candle, throwing the room into darkness. Thomas started forward then checked himself. How long had he—had she—been standing there? He did not know. It seemed an eternity had passed.
The railway company had refused him an interview; they had offered no assurances that safety would be improved, that such a tragedy could never happen again; its hired thugs had beaten him nearly senseless. They had failed to pay for Alice’s funeral—though perhaps this was merely an oversight? Everyone said that, in a case like this, it was usual for the railway company to pay for the funeral. But they had not done so. The bill was unpaid so now he was in debt on top of everything else—
A carriage swung into the mews at full pelt, though the corner was a tight one and the mews very narrow, led by two sweating black horses tossing their heads restlessly and snorting in the freezing air, their hooves on the cobbles shattering the silence, and the liveried coachman on his perch cursed and cracked his whip at the fool who was standing in his way.
The first dinner guests arrived promptly at seven thirty and Dinah knew it was the Miss Courtaulds without even having to look out of her bedroom window. The Miss Courtaulds were second cousins of her mother, unmarried sisters in their seventieth year who resided in a house in Onslow Square that had not been redecorated since the Regency and who spoke of the Duke of Wellington as though he were still alive. They were from an era when a seven thirty appointment meant you arrived at seven thirty. The new fashion of arriving anything up to fifteen minutes after the appointed hour they considered scandalous and were not reticent in saying so.
Dinah moved rapidly down the stairs, and it turned out one could move quite rapidly indeed, once one was no longer penned in with a lot of bones. She moved, she glided, she flew down the stairs, feeling the fabric of her gown ripple across her body in a way that positively encouraged movement. She was free! She was liberated! She could leave the house and fly out into the night! She reached the bottom of the stairs and ran straight into her father.
He paused, adjusting his collar, and smiled at her and Dinah thought, But he is happy, right at this moment Father is happy.
‘I do not believe I have seen you in this gown before, Dinah,’ he said. ‘Is it new?’
The gown was not new. It had been purchased seven months ago but this was the first time she had had a chance to wear it.
She faltered and for a moment could not speak.
She was aware of Bill standing behind her and of her father frowning at Bill’s botched black tie. ‘It is quite new, Father, though I think it is a little large for me now. I believe I was a different size when it was fitted.’
‘Then we shall have to fatten you up a bit. Come, your mother has ordered enough food for a regiment.’ It was an unfortunate analogy, with Roger’s memorial only five days earlier, but he appeared not to notice it for he took her arm with a smile and together they entered the drawing room. Mrs Jarmyn had preceded them and Dinah sensed the change that now came over her father as the lightness fell away from him.
‘Aurora,’ he said, giving his wife a brief nod.
‘Lucas. Dinah, how lovely you look,’ said her mother. ‘And what an unusual shape that gown is …’ she added, appraising the bodice of the gown with a curious frown, and Dinah replied with a challenging smile.
‘Miss Fresia Courtauld and Miss Adelaide Courtauld,’ announced Hermione, curtseying awkwardly then standing back to allow the ladies to enter.
‘Aunt Adelaide. How well you look. Aunt Fresia. What a delightful hat,’ said Mrs Jarmyn, going forward to greet her cousins.
‘Oh, are we the first?’ exclaimed Aunt Adelaide. ‘I am certain the invitation said seven thirty.’
‘We arrived at seven twenty-five and had our driver make two laps of the square,’ Aunt Fresia confided to Dinah. ‘I must say, I expected to see one or two others doing the same?’
Mrs Jarmyn laughed. ‘How amusing you are, Aunt.’
‘I recall a dinner we attended at the Hardinges’ in ’51 or ’52,’ continued Adelaide, ‘do you remember, Fresia, when Papa made us arrive so early we had to do twelve laps of Grosvenor Square before we could announce our arrival? The poor horse was so giddy by the time we stopped, it collapsed and had to be shot.’
‘Fortunately Papa always carried a sidearm with him in those days so it was all managed most discreetly,’ Fresia explained.
‘It was a problem, though, my dear, when it came time to return home,’ her sister reminded her.
‘What a delightful anecdote, Miss Courtauld,’ said Mr Jarmyn, neatly cutting her off. ‘Hart, do please come in.’
Dinah’s shoulders dropped and a little sigh escaped her but she summoned a smile as her father brought Mr Hart over who was to be her partner for the evening. She had been a child the last time they had met, upon which occasion he had not so much as nodded at her. Now she was a young lady of eighteen and Mr Hart, who was surely forty years of age if not more and whose hair was greying at the temples, turned his gaze fully upon her and made a gallant little bow that seemed excessive and was, therefore, somewhat irritating.
‘Miss Jarmyn, how lovely you look. And may I say what a most elegant gown you are wearing.’
Dinah gave him a tight smile. Would he think her quite so lovely, her gown quite so elegant, had he witnessed her in her room butchering her corset not half an hour earlier?
The Eberhardts arrived next, and just behind them, Dr and Mrs Gant and Captain Palmer, so that now the room appeared quite full. Dinah smiled at her partner then ignored him so that when the Freebodys arrived, Mr Hart, whose small talk had begun to flag, appeared visibly relieved. The Duvalls arrival causing a little stir as Mrs Duvall insisted a man had been hiding in the street below, watching her, and Mr Duvall—who had recently returned from a disastrous commercial venture in Durban—just as vehemently insisted she had imagined the whole thing. What threatened to strike a disagreeable note was fortunately diverted by the late and rather dishevelled arrival of the final guest, Professor Dallinger, whose cab had gone to the wrong address.
Dinah listened and smiled and nodded but found she had nothing to contribute. Her mother, by contrast, was dazzling: flitting from couple to couple, producing a brilliant witticism one moment, and a droll observation the next, finding a compliment for the ugliest gown and amusement in the dullest anecdote. She intervened to prevent Mr Freebody from summarising to Mrs Gant the findings of a Board of Trade inquiry; she praised the plunging neckline of Mrs Duvall’s gown even as the Miss Courtaulds gasped at its immodesty; she expressed admiration for Captain Palmer’s military prowess whilst having not the slightest idea of what his role in the military was; she sympathised with Mr Duvall over the recent loss of his diamond mine and she complimented Mrs Freebody on the acquisition of an exquisite and staggeringly expensive necklace made from diamonds cut from the very mine Mr Duvall had just lost. And lastly—though unquestionably it was her finest moment—she forestalled Sissy Eberhardt when she seemed on the verge of inadvertently insulting the Royal Family.
As Mr Hart attempted to engage her in small talk, Dinah observed her mother silently. She recognised that she was witnessing an artist at work. Why then was her father watching on with such a black look on his face?
But now he had caught Dinah watching him and he rearranged his features into a pleasant smile. She smiled back at him automatically. Perhaps she had imagined it. Perhaps
he had been thinking of something that had made him angry and he was not actually angry with Mama. Yes, surely she had been mistaken for now he was making some charming remark to Mrs Freebody that caused Mrs Freebody, who was not a day under fifty-five, to bat his arm and blush prettily.
Mr Hart, who had been so valiantly carrying on their conversation on his own all this time, had asked her a question.
‘I’m so sorry, Mr Hart. What did you say?’
‘I inquired whether you had been out much of late,’ he repeated. ‘I mean to the park, or to the opera? Or to your committees? I understand from your father that you are involved with a number of committees,’ and he gave an encouraging smile.
‘One committee,’ she corrected him, ‘which I believe I may have now resigned from. I have not been to the park or to the opera as we have been in deepest mourning for my sister.’
‘Yes, of course. How remiss—do forgive me,’ replied Mr Hart, offering another of his odd little bows.
But she had gone out the previous Wednesday on the occasion of her cousin’s memorial service following his tragic and, it would appear, utterly pointless death in the Transvaal a fortnight ago, and though she heard these words quite clearly in her head she could not speak them. Beside her Mr Hart had fallen silent.
The conversation around them had now divided itself roughly into two camps, delineated solely by gender: the gentlemen noted that the situation in the Transvaal was escalating ominously and that the sooner the flotilla of ships containing troops and supplies arrived at the Cape the sooner the insurgency could be put down. The ladies noted that Her Majesty and the Royal Family were still resident at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight and had, the previous day, attended a church service. Dinah found herself a party to neither camp. Bill, who at the start of the evening had seemed almost as unenthusiastic about the dinner as herself, was standing very close to the extraordinarily lovely Mrs Eberhardt and appeared to be enjoying himself immensely. Before Dinah could decide if this was a betrayal of what slim sibling affinity remained between them, she noticed Mrs Logan standing in the doorway and she began to realise that something was wrong.