by Mary Brendan
Hugh shook his head and increased his pace.
‘Lady Elizabeth…?’
The call was so buffered by neighbourhood cacophony that at first both Hugh and Elizabeth herself missed being hailed and continued discussing the likelihood of an influenza epidemic.
‘Lady Elizabeth Rowe…?’
The questioning shout strengthened, bringing both Elizabeth and the vicar to an abrupt halt. Extracting her arm from Hugh’s, Elizabeth falteringly approached the nearest tenement doorway. Several pairs of eyes swivelled to her. Even after all these months of hurrying back and forth through these alleys on a Sunday afternoon, she still drew curious stares from the locals. The women, especially, picked over with jealous eyes her blonde hair and fine features and her clean serviceable garb. Hugh was a more prosaic sight to his parishioners. Elizabeth knew that her safe passage through the slums was wholly attributable to the respect these people had for their local minister. But never before had anyone addressed her directly. Never would she have expected them to.
‘Did someone call me?’ Her pupils widened, blackening her eyes as she squinted into the dim interior of the building. The unwholesome stench of rancid food and unwashed humanity had her retreating a pace. In any case, all that was discernible was a broken stairway and a few huddled figures propped against the newel post. About to turn thankfully away, sure she had been mistaken in thinking she’d been summoned, a woman slid from behind the splintered door-frame and simply stared at her. Elizabeth stared back. She knew her. Beneath the sallowing bruise on her face that extended from brow to lip and the matted dark brown hair that tumbled wildly about her thin shoulders was a person she should recognise. But she couldn’t fit a name to that poor, gaunt visage.
The woman laughed wryly at the confusion on Elizabeth’s face, but the sound couldn’t escape her bobbing throat. Her head fell forward into one quivering, cadaverous hand. ‘You don’t remember me, do you? That’s not surprising: I like to think I don’t look the same.’ It was a cultured voice, just a hint of cockney dialect taking the edge off the vowels and running words together. She shook back her snarled hair, squinted sideways at Elizabeth, a poignant arrogance in the slant of her mouth, the tilt of her head. ‘’Ere, take a proper look. Know me now?’ she challenged, adopting the local nasal twang for all its worth. ‘Ain’t a pretty sight no longer, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Jane? Jane Dawson?’
‘As was. I married Colonel Selby, remember? Did well, didn’t I?’ she gutturally mocked herself. She stared at Elizabeth with eyes like wet black pebbles. ‘I certainly thought I’d done better than you that year,’ she commented slyly and chuckled as the colour rose beneath Elizabeth’s pale complexion. ‘Never can tell how things’ll turn out…’ she added with a toss of her tangles. She cocked her head to take a look at Hugh Clemence who was hovering a pace or two behind watching, listening to their exchange. ‘You married now? To him?’ Jane demanded, cuffing her nose and sniffing. ‘You a parson’s wife?’
‘No! No, the Reverend and I teach Sunday School together. In Barrow Road,’ Elizabeth explained with a hand flick back the way they’d just come. Aware that this unusual discourse between a lady of quality and one of their own had drawn inquisitive bystanders, Elizabeth placed a hand on Jane’s thin arm and drew her outside to shelter behind the open door. ‘What on earth has happened? Where is your husband? Is the Colonel dead?’ Elizabeth asked with a perplexed frown.
‘Damned if I know,’ Jane said on a dull guffaw. ‘It turned out he wasn’t my husband after all; he wasn’t a colonel either. It transpired, my lady,’ she mocked in a soft, precise drawl, ‘that the bounder already had a wife in Yorkshire and another in Portugal.’ She blinked rapidly and bit her lip before choking, ‘I think he married the foreigner while in the army during the war. He lied about being invalided out and his rank and regiment. He was a sergeant who had been cashiered from the infantry for cowardice and thievery. I never did any better than you, with that Lieutenant Havering. Army bastards!’ She spat. She looked Elizabeth up and down, her glittering black eyes lingering covetously on her fair, classical features. ‘But that’s not right. You’ve done well enough by the looks of things, if not as well as you ought. Looks like scandal slid off you like water off a duck’s back…’
Elizabeth managed a wan smile. ‘Not quite. But I’ve been lucky in that my grandmother—my maternal grandmother, that is—has never shunned me. In fact, without her, after my papa died a few years ago, I don’t know how I would have survived…’
‘Same way as me, I expect.’ Jane’s light spite transformed into a conversational, ‘I heard that the old Dowager Marchioness cold-shouldered you.’ She leaned forward, giggled conspiratorially, ‘She always was a toffee-nosed, miserable old biddy. Do you remember our first time at Vauxhall, when you and Sally Treacher and me got lost in the walk-ways?’
Elizabeth bit her lip and laughed. ‘Yes, I do. The Dowager nearly had an apoplexy!’
‘So did my mama. She accused me of losing more than my shawl in the bushes that evening! That silly cow, Mrs Treacher, told her that Trelawney and his band of lusty chums were spotted in the same grove. They both needed reviving with hartshorn after that. When I found out we’d missed them, I was bloody angry…’ she exclaimed on a ribald laugh.
Aware that Hugh had moved closer on hearing mention of that particular gentleman, Elizabeth demanded in a low tone, ‘But what on earth has happened to you? Why is it come to this, Jane? What of your parents? They surely don’t know how you’re living?’
Jane put a hand to her trembling mouth, spoke from behind it in gasping bursts. ‘They wouldn’t care if I was dead. No, that’s not true. They’d prefer it if I was. And it’s come to this…because I loved him. Because when my father told me…he had discovered sordid details…of Frank’s past…I wouldn’t believe it. My papa told me to choose…return home with him…or stay with my bigamist…in which case they no longer had a daughter. So I chose…because I was sure he loved me…but he’s gone…abandoned me…and our son.’
‘You have a son?’ Elizabeth whispered, aghast. ‘Living here?’ She shot an anxious glance at Hugh who was frowning back, listening intently to all that passed between the two women.
Jane nodded. ‘Upstairs.’ She jerked her head to indicate the doorway. ‘Dosed little Jack with laudanum this evening. Keeps him quiet and out of harm’s way.’
Elizabeth closed a firm hand on her friend’s wrist. ‘That is too much! Fetch the little lad now and come home with me to Marylebone. I shall see what can be done.’
Jane wrenched from her grip and backed off, eyes wild with terror. ‘I can’t do that. You don’t understand. I can’t do that. He’ll never let me…not till I pay him…’
‘Who? Who do you mean?’
‘’S’pect she means me,’ came drifting in an oily drawl on the river-pungent air.
Elizabeth spun about to see a stocky man, sallow of complexion, with greasy-looking dark curls corkscrewing on to his wide forehead. His eyes were an incongruous bright blue, the edges a sunburst of creases as he squinted foxily at them. He slid along the wall as though he might have been spewed from one of the many doorways agape in the rotten brick. Reaching Jane, he slung a possessive, brawny arm about her shoulders. His hand clenched into a thick fist, making the muscle in his forearm jump beneath a matting of wiry hairs. Jane seemed to shrink, become ever more brittle beneath the mean embrace.
‘Aren’t yer goin’ t’intradoos me to yer friend?’ he silkily enquired. ‘’Course me ’n the Reverend’s ’kwainted.’ When Jane remained quiet with head lowered, he gave her thin body a brusque shake. ‘No manners, gel? ’Oos the luvlie lady wiv the vicar?’ The cap pushed to the back of his head at a jaunty angle was doffed in a travesty of respect. It was swept low towards his dirty dark trousers, before resting against a dapper corduroy waistcoat.
Hugh laid a heavy hand on Elizabeth’s arm and determinedly drew her away. At the same time, he said coldly, ‘I see you’r
e at your old tricks, Leach. No dock work to keep you? Have you tried earning your own living?’
‘’S’not me, Reverend,’ the man whined craftily. ‘S’these bad girls wot know the tricks and get’s me inta trouble. You ask ’m if’n they don’t. Badgers me ta look out for’m, they do. So that’s wot I do, ’cos I’m a carin’ sorta feller.’ He shook Jane masterfully again. ‘Tell the vicar jus’ ’ow good Leachie looks out fer yer.’
Jane raised wide, jet-black eyes. ‘He does,’ she whispered. ‘Go away. I’m sorry…I shouldn’t have troubled you…I beg you not to come back…’ Grabbing her grubby skirts in her fists, she pulled out of the man’s restraint and was swallowed by darkness inside the dank portal.
‘Come, Elizabeth!’ Hugh’s voice was aquiver with urgency and anger.
‘No!’ Elizabeth swivelled back to glare at the swarthy man who was leering unpleasantly at her. She watched his tongue tip protrude, then work its slow way about his fleshy lips.
Heavy lids weighted over eyes that crawled her primly dressed figure while rough, wiry fingers thoughtfully massaged an unshaven chin. ‘Don’t yer go takin’ no ’eed o’ Jane now,’ he growled. ‘She’s poor wiv manners at times. I’ve ’ad ta speak sharp wiv ’er over that ’afore. ’Specially when she’s sharp wiv the gents ’oo want ta treat ’er right. You come back an’ see Leachie offen as yer like…’cos I’ve a notion there’s plenty a gent might jus’ luv ta treat you right. Might even be me.’
Elizabeth opened her mouth to flay him with her disgust but could only think that, if she did, Jane’s plight would be that much worse. Her impotent rage put her teeth on edge, curled her shaking fingers.
Leachie recognised her angry frustration and smirked, then laughed raucously, bending over at the waist. Elizabeth turned away and blindly groped for Hugh Clemence’s arm so he could lead her away.
‘Be sensible, Elizabeth. Listen to what Reverend Clemence is telling you. These vermin are not to be trifled with. They are vicious miscreants who have their own codes; their own underworld hierarchies…’
Elizabeth continued shaking her head at her grandmother until Edwina flung her hands up in despair. She glared at Hugh Clemence, who was still standing close to the door as though uncertain whether he would be welcomed further into the parlour. ‘Oh, you speak to her again, vicar. But know this: I hold you responsible for it all. You should never have begun this nonsense of encouraging a gentlewoman to slum visit. See what you have done! Oh, never mind.’ She illustrated her impatience with his red-faced distress by flapping a fat hand. ‘For now, just impress again on Lady Elizabeth the dangers of associating with this low-life. And that she must never return.’
‘I do not need to again be told,’ Elizabeth enunciated angrily. ‘I do not need you to blame Hugh for my behaviour. I am a woman of nearly twenty-nine and quite capable of making up my own mind about helping the needy. Today I have sincerely understood just how important it is that such work continues. I have seen with my own eyes just how squalid and mean life can be. I have had paraded before my own eyes living proof that there, but for the grace of God, go I. And if you think for one moment I am about to abandon an old friend, and her son, to that foul man…’
Hugh hastened forward. ‘Listen, please, Elizabeth. It is not simply a case of rescuing a…er, fallen woman and her child. Men like Leach tie the wretched creatures to them with debts as well as fear.’ An unsteady hand scraped through his brown hair. ‘I doubt you have heard of Old Mother Leach. I pray you have not. She is a notorious fence and a bawdy-house keeper. Her name should bring trepidation to the hearts of all decent folk. Nathaniel Leach, whom you met today, is her son and in the same line of business. He knows nothing else. That isn’t to excuse him, it’s simply the truth. They deal in prostitutes and pickpockets. They are parasites of the worst kind.’
‘I don’t care!’ Elizabeth raged, her beautiful eyes sparking blue flame.
‘Please listen,’ Hugh again begged. ‘As hard as it must be for you to accept, the sad truth is that Mrs Selby is very much in his power and unlikely to leave. Leach will have gained her trust by posing as a concerned friend when she was vulnerable and isolated. He might have presented food or clothes, insinuating they are gifts, then introduced her to an usurer when it is time to pay. He will have told her how easy it is to borrow to settle her dues; how soon she and her son will be able to escape to a better life if she only does as he bids. He will have snared her with her own hope. None of it ever comes about. Only the debt collector comes about. So does Leach, to take what she earns from clients he finds her. He’ll give her a little back, keep a tally and encourage her to borrow more. So the debt mounts and the trap closes. She will never have the means to break free; Leach will make very sure of that. And inhuman as it may seem to you, her parents will never now want to know how you found her…or where…’
‘Give me some money, Grandmama,’ Elizabeth demanded, turning her back on Hugh’s pained expression. ‘I am begging you as never before to allow me some of my inheritance to help someone far, far worse off than I have ever been.’ Heartfelt appeal throbbed in her voice, blazed in her violet eyes.
Edwina stalked away. ‘This is madness, Elizabeth. Have you heard nothing the Reverend has said? You cannot help in these instances. Do you think I will allow you to involve us with such scum? Do you imagine this Leach is likely to allow you to steal his meal ticket from under his nose without a fight? If he discovers we are two women living alone save for servants, he might send his evil accomplices to rob us blind. He might murder us in our beds!’ Edwina pointed a finger at Hugh Clemence. ‘Am I not right in m’fears, vicar?’ she asked loudly, daring him to contradict.
‘Possibly, Mrs Sampson,’ Hugh admitted on a lingering sigh. ‘And, forgive me, but there is no peace in agreeing with you.’
Edwina nodded vehemently, her salt and pepper ringlets dancing crazily. ‘I’ll listen to no more foolishness from you, m’girl. I forbid you to go back there. If you defy me, I swear you will be sorry!’
The door slammed after her grandmother’s dumpy, bristling figure. Elizabeth looked at Hugh. He needed no more encouragement than that doe-eyed glance. Approaching her, he took both her small, cold hands into the warm comfort of his. ‘I’m so sorry, Elizabeth. It’s my fault. Your grandmother is right to reprimand me. Involving you in a project in such a stew was not wise. Had I not done so, this evening’s chance meeting with Mrs Selby would never have come about.’
‘I’m glad it did,’ Elizabeth interrupted quietly, squeezing at his fingers. ‘At last I feel there is an opportunity for me to truly make a difference. And please don’t feel guilty. I volunteered to become involved in Barrow Road. And I want to continue helping. More so than ever now.’
‘If you truly mean that, Elizabeth, you must allow me to protect you properly,’ Hugh uttered hoarsely. ‘You must let me shield you with every means in my power. I would be so very honoured if you would allow me to protect you with my name and my humble vocation…’
Elizabeth squeezed his hands more firmly to make him stop. ‘Please don’t say any more, Hugh. Just know that I am greatly obliged to count you amongst my true and loyal friends.’ Disengaging her hands, she choked a wry little laugh. ‘It has been rather an exhausting day, to say the least. I think retiring early is in order. First, I suppose I had best find my grandmama and make my peace. ’Twill in some small part help me sleep.’
Hugh managed a wavering smile and a fleeting touch of his lips to her fingertips before she gently withdrew.
‘No, the long-sleeved one, Josie. There seems to be a chill in the air tonight,’ Elizabeth told her maid. Obediently, Josie folded away the frothy sleeveless nightdress and replaced it in the clothes press. She removed another and began shaking out heavy brushed cotton that dragged on the floor.
Elizabeth wandered to the fire in her undergarments, holding the fragrant warmth of the washing cloth flat against her face. With a sigh, she moved her face up and down against flannel-covered pal
ms, scouring away the day’s grime. It dropped from her fingers to plop back into the shallow bowl, slopping splashes of steaming water onto her writing desk. Retrieving and wringing out the cloth, Elizabeth wiped her arms, dipping her head as she washed a shoulder, reached beneath her heavy hair to scrub her nape. Her lowered eyes encountered the note on her bureau. She immediately relinquished the cloth and picked up the letter, her heart missing a beat. With all the commotion and consternation surrounding her reunion with Jane Selby, she had forgotten about the Viscount and her own problems. But then, in comparison with what she had witnessed today, her feud with Stratton paled into insignificance. She had a doting grandmother, enough food to eat, clean clothes and bedding. She had no problems.
Water droplets had swirled with ink to form a small black pearl upon the paper. She touched a fingertip to it; withdrew it to read again the curt suggestion they once more meet. Perhaps return your family’s jewellery was untouched by greyish smears. The words were clear and precise and seemed to leap significantly out from the paper. And what came to her next was so simple yet so shocking that she clutched at the bed edge and sat down.
If she could brave the pitfalls of Wapping on a Sunday afternoon, she could do this. What had she to lose? No good name and no keepsake. Both were already gone. And if she didn’t act immediately, while the horrors of Jane’s predicament still churned her stomach and the thought of a small boy drugged into oblivion on a filthy bed sent bile to her throat, she might never in her life act from true, selfless compassion at all. The seed was in her mind, needing just a sprinkling of stalwart courage to help it blossom.
The note drifted from her quivering fingers onto the bureau. Elizabeth stared out of the window into the gathering dusk. Treetops swayed close to the glass in a stirring breeze. It wasn’t so late. Barely nine of the clock, she guessed. She knew Edwina had already retired. She had said her goodnights to her grandmother in her chamber, kissed away her grumpiness and smoothed her soft cheek with appeasing fingers.