The heat hit his lungs like a wall as he re-entered the room. He could smell his hair singeing in the heat and the wool of his coat smouldering. Jumping over the prone figure of Thomas and the beam that straddled him, Robert sped towards the window with its jagged teeth of glass sticking out of the frame. He moved forward into the room and the heat beat him back.
But the window was his only hope.
A vision of Ellen floated into Robert’s mind, spurring him forward through the heat, flames and choking smoke. He was going to get out of here because he refused to die without loving her.
Judging the height of the sill, Robert launched himself sideways at the window and sailed through it. As he did, he heard the explosion as the flames reached the spirits and chemicals on the storage shelves and a mighty whoosh as the roof followed the upper floors of the house to the ground.
Robert landed with a thump on the hard cobbles and instinctively rolled to extinguish any flames that had caught hold of his clothing. Coming to a halt he was immediately surrounded by a crowd of people. Staggering to his feet, Robert glanced down. His clothes were soot black and burnt in places. He ran his hands over his face and head, feeling the wiry texture of burnt hair.
‘Praise be to the Blessed Virgin,’ a woman said, as she dusted him down.
She was right. Praise be. Other than a few cuts, bruises and the odd blister Robert appeared to be unscathed. He took a deep breath.
In contrast to the heat of the dispensary the evening air was cool and fresh. He glanced around and then the full horror of what had happened washed over him. The dispensary he had only just escaped from was now no more than a blackened hulk. The roof had collapsed, jeaving only the charred brick walls standing. But that wasn’t all. Not only were his offices and workroom razed, but the two lodging houses on either side were now becoming engulfed in the flames as well. He stood aghast and watched as men and women dashed back and forth with buckets of water in a vain attempt to stem the blaze. To one side a group of women stood, their shawls tight around their heads and their eyes red with tears, while men desperately tried to reach those still trapped inside.
The house to the right was still standing for the most part, and in the upper windows a woman with two children could be seen imploring those below to help. Men were shouting for her to throw the children down and, lifting an infant up, the distraught mother did just that. All, including Robert, held their breath as the small child travelled though the air towards the pavement below. Two strong arms caught it and it was swiftly taken by a woman bystander who tried to soothe its screams.
The men below called for the other child. The mother was in the process of lifting it to follow the first when there was an almighty sound of creaking timbers. The mother screamed once, then disappeared as the floor she was standing on collapsed. There was a deathly silence broken only by the crackle of flames.
The fire had been intended to kill him, but he had survived while others - Thomas, the mother at the window and others - had died.
He breathed deeply, sucking in life. Yes, he was alive and he wanted Ellen.
After saying goodbye to Maisy Turner, the ribbon and lace seller opposite the Bell foundry, Ellen left the market with her basket on her arm. She smiled at friends and acquaintances as they passed her by, exchanging the odd word and smile. But behind Ellen’s cheerful exterior, she sobbed. She sobbed as one who has lost everything in the world that she has lived for. She had lost Robert Munroe.
A vision of him leaning on the rail at the Angel and Crown took shape in her mind. No, she hadn’t lost him, she had refused him. And in doing so had ripped the hearts out of both of them.
She told herself during the long cheerless day that she had been right to refuse his offer of marriage. She loved Robert Munroe too much to ruin him, his career and his future happiness. But by the time she stumbled into bed, exhausted after battling with heart and body all day, Ellen had failed to convince herself. She then spent hours staring up at the ceiling.
Who had ever heard of a man refusing to make love to the woman he professed to love? A grudging smile crossed her lips as she stepped over the stream of sewage babbling along in the centre of the street. God, he was stubborn, as stubborn as she, and she loved him for it. What had he said? I want you for my wife, nothing less.
What love!
Repositioning the basket that held the evening meal, Ellen crossed into New Road. In contrast to Whitechapel the thoroughfare to Wapping was quiet, with just a few barrows being taken back to their night storage and weary-looking souls shuffling home after a back-breaking day’s work in a sweatshop.
As she started down Cannon Street Road, Ellen’s attention was caught by a large pool of black smoke rising above the closely packed houses. She judged it to be be somewhere near to Chapman Street. She hurried on. Others now joined her as she turned into Cable Street and headed home and towards the fire. People were shouting and running to assist.
There were calls for the police and a hue and cry of outrage as men dashed past her with buckets in their hands. Now she could smell the acrid wood smoke in her nostrils. Running on down Cable Street and into Chapman Street, she was caught in a crowd and had to push forward. People seemed to be rushing with buckets full of water along to the other end.
Robert’s dispensary was at that end of the street. A cold hand clutched at Ellen’s heart and, dropping her basket on the pavement, she lifted her skirts and tore down the street. Forcing her way through the crowds of women, she stood and gasped at the sight before her. Where the dispensary once stood was now a gaping hole with only fragments of wall, like rotten teeth, where the house used to be. The charred beams that had crashed down jutted out at acute angles.
Sweet mother!
Her eyes fixed on the wreck of the dispensary. Was Robert lying dead under the rubble? A scream rose in her throat. How would she live without him? Did she want to? She stood frozen for a moment, then forced herself to action.
Ellen looked more closely at the scene. It wasn’t just the dispensary that had been consumed by the inferno but the lodging houses on either side which were now also mere charred rubble. How many people had been trapped in there, she wondered. She stood back as men carrying full buckets and shouting for more shoved past the group of women. The hiss of water turning to steam could be heard as bucket after bucket of water was thrown onto the fire.
‘They have taken three bodies out so far,’ a woman’s voice said behind Ellen. ‘One of ’em a bundle no more than its first birthday.’ She spun her head around to see who was addressing her. An old woman swathed in a dun-coloured shawl looked up at her with watery blue eyes.
The woman shook her head. ‘They are saying that someone was seen running away, and that some draymen from the sugar refinery gave chase.’
Someone caught at Ellen’s arm, and she looked down into the face of a young boy with an unruly mop of red hair. He tugged at her arm again, his thin fingers clutching at her arm.
‘I heard as how someone saw Bull Hennessey hanging around a few moments before the doctor’s gaff went up,’ he said, wiping his nose on his dirty, ragged jacket sleeve. All knows ‘ow ‘e as a grudge against the doctor for somefink.’
‘What about the doctor? Doctor Munroe?’ Ellen’s mind screamed at her and she managed to get her mouth to form words. Was he in the dispensary?’
‘He was when I passed by an hour ago, saw him through the door, but where he is now and if he is under that lot,’ the old woman nodded towards the rubble which rescuers were now climbing, ‘I couldn’t rightly tell you. Saint of a man so ’e was, and no argument to it.’
‘That he is, missus.’ The young lad was hopping from side to side on nimble bare feet to see past the spectators. ‘I hopes as like ’e’s not a goner.’
A bottomless pit opened up under Ellen’s feet. I should have agreed to marry him, she thought bitterly. At least we could have had a brief time of love together. Now there was nothing, no memories and no future.
‘Doctor Munroe,’ she said, her heart now galloping uncontrollably in her chest. ‘Is he...?’
‘Doctor Munroe, God bless him, must have had the Angel Gabriel himself watching over him this afternoon, because I saw the doctor myself, black and singed, making his way to Wapping Police Station with the beat constable.’
Robert Munroe was alive. Ellen stumbled back clutching her chest. A wail went up from the crowd of women as another body was brought out. This one, from its size, clearly a child.
‘How did it start?’ she asked, as the man wiped the sweat from his brow with his forearm.
‘It started in the dispensary and then swept through the houses either side before anyone could stop it.’ He stood back as a beam crashed to the ground from the upper floor. ‘I heard that something was thrown through the window, an oil lamp I expect, by the look of this.’ He kicked a beam with his toe and a puff of ash rose from it. ‘And the doctor’s rooms went up like a powder keg, what with the spirit and stuff in there.’
Behind Ellen two bodies, contorted and almost unrecognisable as human beings, were being brought out. As she looked down at the two lifeless forms, the full horror of what had happened dawned on her. Robert was alive, but these poor souls and those carried out earlier weren’t. Lifting her head, she gazed up at the walls of the three buildings. Both houses were three-storey lodgings with families in almost every room. How many people had died? Standing with her arms limp at her sides, Ellen saw men struggling to release two other doomed wretches from under a fallen beam.
As an icy chill ran the length of her spine Ellen knew that, although Hennessey was likely to have started the fire, it was Danny Donovan behind the deed.
With a hot meal and three brandies in his stomach Robert was beginning to feel better. He folded his silk dressing gown around him and prodded the logs on the fire with a poker. A few sparks illuminated the room for a second, then returned it to its soft, warm glow. Robert had set the lamps to low. He was warm and smoke-free after a soak in the hot tub and his hair was now clean, but still damp at the edges. He had put his trousers back on, but hadn’t bothered with his shirt.
He had spent three hours in the Wapping Police Station with Inspector Jackson, giving an account of the disastrous events. In one respect, the fire at the dispensary might have brought Jackson a little nearer to getting that hard evidence, because Brian Hennessey had been apprehended a mile away with lamp oil spilled down his clothes. According to Jackson, when the draymen caught him, Hennessey was fighting drunk. They would have to wait until he sobered up before they could question him fully. Given the enormity of the criminal charges that awaited him, Jackson was hopeful that he might turn king’s evidence.
Settled in his leather chair by the fire Robert took another sip of warm brandy and thought of Ellen. She was his only thought when he desperately threw himself through the glass window of the dispensary and he had thought of her on and off for the rest of the day. He desperately wanted to see her and hold her - and he was still determined to marry her. But now, after coming so close to death, Robert wanted to live with Ellen, however that might be. First thing in the morning he would go to her.
The fire... A wave of sadness swept over him. He would organise a sum of money to be sent to Thomas’s widowed mother in Shoreditch. But there had been not only Thomas, but the Chambers, the Harrises, the Moodys, and the other families who lived in the lodging houses on either side of his rooms - houses now just charred ruins. As a doctor he had seen many terrible things, but the sight of people desperately trying to escape through windows as the fire consumed them would haunt him for the rest of his days.
Letting his head fall back, he closed his eyes and thought of tomorrow. He would ask, nay, beg, Ellen to be his wife, but if she said no this time he would forget his principles and love her as she asked.
There was a faint knock on the door. Thinking it was Bulmer, Robert kept his eyes closed and called ‘Enter’. He heard the door open and close then nothing. He opened his eyes.
Standing in the soft light of the dimmed lamp was Ellen. She was dressed in the same light-green dress in which he had first seen her, with a warm coat over it. Her hair was covered with her shawl, which obscured the lower part of her face, but it was her eyes that caught his heart. They stared at him with love brimming out of their dark-green depths. He rose slowly from the chair, his gaze taking in every last detail of her as she stood in his room.
They stared at each other for a second, then Robert reached out his hand. She shrugged off her shawl and coat as she came towards him, throwing herself into his embrace.
‘Thank God,’ she said, sobbing into his chest. Robert let his arms encircle her, pulling her close to him.
His large hand held her head tenderly as he kissed her hair over and over again. ‘It’s all right, my love. How did you get in?’ he asked, not quite believing that she was actually in his arms.
‘I caught Bulmer at the back door and told him I needed to see you.’ She looked up at him with an amused smile on her face. ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure he is discreet.’
‘I don’t give a damn if he is or isn’t, I am not ashamed of you or my love for you,’ he said.
She didn’t answer, just hugged him to her. ‘When I saw your dispensary and thought you were dead in that rubble, I didn’t want to live, Robert, not without you,’ she said, tilting her face up towards his.
Her words spread though him, warming him with love as he gazed down into her beautiful face. He smiled at her. ‘I love you so much.’
‘I love you,’ she said breathlessly, her arms sliding around him and holding him close.
‘Then marry me,’ he begged, her closeness beginning to interfere with his thought processes.
She shook her head, a small regretful smile on her lips. ‘Make love to me, Robert,’ she answered, as her small hand reached around the back of his neck and pulled him to her.
‘Please, Ellen,’ he begged.
Again the small shake of her head. ‘Robert, I want you,’ she answered as her lips parted in readiness for his kiss.
Robert’s senses were swamped with Ellen against him, imploring him to make love to her. He had fought with all the strength he could muster and he would win the war to make Ellen his wife, but for now he had to concede this battle to her. He was only a man and with the woman who held his heart begging him to make love to her, Robert had neither the will nor the inclination to fight any longer.
Ellen lay for a long while listening to Robert breathe. Behind the heavy drapes at the window the clock of St Mary’s chimed twelve.
She had awakened just a few moments ago, wondering where she was, then snuggled back into Robert’s warm body as she remembered. His arm had slid possessively around her in his sleep and remained there, his hand relaxed on her hip. She shifted up onto one elbow and gazed down at him in the dim light. He stirred as she moved, but did not wake.
Ellen knew that she would have to leave soon, but not quite yet. She wanted to watch the man she loved as he slept.
He was lying on his back, the arm furthest away from Ellen behind his head. He had kicked the covers down and they now barely covered his hips. Ellen casually studied him in the half light. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought his profession was that of a labourer, not a doctor, as his physique was like one that had been honed by hard manual work. His broad chest was covered with a thick mass of hair that tapered down the centre of his stomach only to spread again as it travelled below his navel.
Her gaze wandered back to Robert’s profile and to the night-time bristle now clearly visible across his cheek and over his chin. She lightly rested her hand on the delicate skin at the top of her breasts where those bristles had scraped her sk
in as Robert covered her with hot kisses...
Later, Ellen told herself, although the temptation to wake Robert now and make love to him nearly overwhelmed her. Her hand reached out and she rested it gently on his chest. His hand came back and covered it.
If you married Robert you wouldn’t have to leave, a little voice inside her head said and for one brief moment Ellen allowed herself the luxury of imagining a world where she and Robert could be man and wife.
A tear caught her unexpectedly. There was no point wishing for the impossible, such a world didn’t exist. All they had was this moment, and any happiness they could snatch in the future.
A cart on its way to market rattled over the cobbled street outside and Robert started up. He blinked twice, then looked across at her, and his face relaxed. He pulled her into his arms and gazed down at her.
‘Marry me, Ellen,’ he said simply.
She gave him a bright smile. ‘You know I can’t.’
‘I know no such thing,’ he said, holding her tighter. ‘All I know is I can’t live without you and have no intention of doing so.’
Say yes, you fool! her mind and emotions told her. For one split second the word hovered on her lips. It would be so easy. One little word. Turning away from her own happiness she gave him a sad smile and shook her head.
‘I won’t give up,’ he said fixing her with a penetrating look.
She struggled half-heartedly against him. ‘It’s just past midnight. I have to go,’ she said, trying to twist out of his arms. His hand slid up her leg, over her hip bone and up to her breast.
‘Not yet, Ellen, just an hour more.’ He pulled her to him and slid his leg over hers.
What could she say? How could she refuse? Reaching up, Ellen moved the lock of unruly hair off his forehead. Robert smiled and gathered her under him once again.
No Cure for Love Page 19