by Lizzie Lane
Magda decided that one look at Danny Rossi and the most miserable person couldn’t help but smile, though perhaps with the exception of Aunt Bridget.
‘Is this your stall?’ she asked him.
‘My dad’s.’
‘So you help him out.’
‘For the moment. I have to do what I have to do and this is what I have to do right now. Won’t always do it though. I’ve got plans. Believe me I’ve got plans.’
‘What plans?’
‘Plans to be better than what I am. Plans to be important and useful.’ He winked. ‘And to wear a uniform. I want to be like ’im.’
He pulled a battered novel from his back pocket and flicked his fingers at the lurid cover. Magda read the title.
Barton on the Beat.
‘I read loads of Bob Barton books. He’s a London copper.’
‘So you want to be a policeman?’
‘Shhh,’ he hissed, placing a finger before his lips. ‘Not so loud. Don’t let anyone round ’ere hear you saying that. They’d think me a traitor – selling ’em out so to speak. Still, beats selling fruit and vegetables.’
‘Selling fruit and vegetables is useful – where would we be without them?’
He threw back his head and laughed, which had the effect of sending his overlong hair spreading around his neck like a collar.
Magda frowned as a very serious thought occurred to her. ‘Will you find missing persons, things like that?’
‘You bet I will, though to start off with it’ll probably be just lost dogs. Why do you ask?’
She told him about wanting to find her family.
‘Could you help me find them?’
He looked taken aback. Reading about being a police detective and actually playing the part were two different things.
Magda misinterpreted. ‘I can’t pay you anything so can’t ask you to look for them for me, but if you could tell me what to do, how to find missing people, I would be really grateful.’
‘I’m not a policeman yet.’
‘No, but you will be. And you’re sure to be good at it after reading all those Bob Barton books.’
‘Well.’ He scratched the back of his head as he thought about it. ‘I s’pose it wouldn’t hurt to get me hand in so to speak. Tell you what, let me ’ave a think and I’ll see what I can come up with. Trot along ’ere tomorrow about half an hour earlier than now. I’ll take my break and we can ’ave a bite to eat together over on the seat there. ’Ow would that be?’
She eyed him warily, wondering if he was making fun or really serious.
‘You mean it? You’re not making fun of me because I’m only a child and a lot younger than you?’
Looking seriously impressed, he shook his head. ‘No. Of course not. Now go on, clear off before I change me mind.’
She thought about asking if he had a pencil she could borrow, but didn’t want to push her luck.
She dashed round the corner into Beatrice Street so fast that she collided with what seemed like a green wall in front of her.
‘Blimey, you’re in a hurry. Been a fire or something?’
Magda looked up into a face that was round as a pumpkin above a dark green jacket and knee-length pleated skirt. There was something youthful about that face, as though the owner wasn’t much more than a child forced through circumstance to grow up too early.
Magda recognised her as one of the girls from the grand house across the road.
‘Looks like you done all right for yourself,’ said the girl, nodding down at the orange string sack.
‘It was all free. From underneath the stall. I didn’t pinch anything and Danny Rossi gave me a pig’s tail. I’m going to make a stew.’
‘Well, aren’t you the one! Going back now are ya?’
Magda nodded and thought how beautiful the young woman smelt. Roses. Flowers anyway.
‘My mother used to wear a hat like yours,’ said Magda, glad of someone to talk to besides Bridget Brodie. Not that she ever talked – not really. Just shouted.
‘Do you like it?’
Magda nodded.
The mustard hat reminded Magda of one her mother used to wear – a cloche she’d called it, but Magda had always called it her tulip hat because that’s what the shape reminded her of – a tulip – a dark red one in her mother’s case, not mustard like this one.
‘Your name’s Magda, innit?’
Magda nodded. ‘It’s short for Magdalena. Magdalena Brodie.’
‘Mine’s Emily. Emily Crocker. I’ll walk back with you if you like. That sack looks a bit heavy. Wanna hand?’
Magda shook her head and cradled the sack in her arms.
‘Looks a nice lot you’ve got there. Bet you got everything you wanted.’
Magda chewed her lip. ‘Everything except a pencil. I really do need a pencil. And some new crayons if I could get some, but I can manage with my old ones though they are a bit worn down.’
She didn’t add that even if she had located a pencil, she hadn’t any money to pay for it.
‘Is that all? I think I could find you one. You live over in the house opposite with that old …’
‘Connemara mare.’
‘Oh. So you already know what we all call her. Old cow if what I heard about her is right. Been carrying on with the landlord of the Red Cow, and ’im with a sick wife upstairs and likely put away before long.’
‘What does that mean? Carrying on?’
‘Well,’ said Emily taking a deep breath. ‘It’s like skipping with somebody else’s skipping rope when you don’t have their permission to use it.’
Magda eyed her, open mouthed. ‘Shouldn’t she be confessing all that to the priest?’
Emily burst out laughing. ‘Well, I should think it would give the old priest something to entertain his quiet moments.’
Magda laughed with her. It just seemed the right thing to do.
‘I’ve seen you looking out of the window,’ said Emily. ‘Don’t go out much do you?’
Despite her threadbare appearance, Magda held her head high. ‘My aunt wouldn’t let me but I will do from now on. I pretended to faint from hunger so she told me to go out and find some food for myself. She told me my father hadn’t left enough to feed me on. Mind you, she makes sure she don’t go hungry.’
‘Yeah, and she gets that for free, down at the Red Cow, food and drink for services rendered,’ Emily said with a laugh. ‘So. What do you want the pencil for? Writing to somebody are you?’
It all came flooding out. Magda told her about her family and how they’d last been together at Christmas last year. She also told her about the letters she wrote regularly on sausage paper and her plan to make her own Christmas cards to send to her siblings.
‘I can’t really send them because I don’t know where they are without their addresses. But I thought I could keep them for when we do eventually meet up.’
Emily smiled down at her. ‘I think that’s a lovely idea. I’m surprised that old …’ She checked herself. ‘Your aunt …’
‘It’s all right. You can call her an old cow or the Connemara mare. She calls you tarts. Sluts and whores who sell their bodies to men that they might fornicate with them in unholy nakedness.’
Emily’s jaw dropped. ‘Bloody hell. Sounds like a sermon from the pulpit don’t it. And like the pot calling the kettle black. Reckon it don’t matter if I call ’er names then does it?’
Magda shook her head. ‘What does fornicate mean?’
Emily burst out laughing.
‘It’s something men think they’re good at.’
‘But they’re not?’
Emily was still grinning. ‘No, they just like to think they are.’
‘I’m glad to have somebody to converse with.’
‘Converse? Well, that’s a long word.’
‘I like words. I’m glad I’ve spoken to you. Because I haven’t been out of the house, I haven’t spoken to anyone else in ages. I thought I might never be able to speak again, b
ut I have and that’s good.’
Emily cocked her head to one side and her face was all smiles.
‘Don’t ever lose your voice, girl. You’ve got a pretty voice. Different than what I ’ear round ’ere. I thought you’d speak a bit Irish like yer aunt, but you don’t.’
‘My mother was Italian. She was careful how she spoke English because she wasn’t born to it.’
Emily nodded carefully as though she were thinking deep thoughts.
‘I can find you a pencil,’ she said at last. ‘How about I pop it over to you when the old cow’s gone to the pub?’
‘She locks the door when she goes out,’ Magda said, her tone not so merry as they got closer to the gloomy house in Edward Street.
‘Never mind. I can pass it under the door to you. How would that be?’
In her mind’s eye, Magda visualised the ill-fitting door.
‘The gap beneath the door is big enough to push a pencil under.’
‘Big enough to push a bit of decent paper and card under too? Paper for your letters, card for your cards.’
Magda was staring into the street, her stomach churning. Her steps slowed. She really didn’t want to go back into that house, but the Bible with those addresses inside was there.
Seeing the stiffening of Magda’s face, Emily slowed her steps too.
‘How come you’re not at school?’
Magda hunched her shoulders and heaved a big sigh. ‘She won’t let me go. She won’t let me read either. Says all I’m fit for is to scrub floors. Mostly her floors. But I’m working on getting her to let me go to school. There has to be somebody who can make her let me go, don’t you think?’
Emily Crocker narrowed her eyes. She had a mind to interfere, but no doubt Winnie One Leg would tell her to mind her own business. Out of the corner of her eyes she could see Winnie now, trying not to be seen but there all the same, sneaking a peek out of the window.
‘Leave the pencils and stuff with me. I can find something a bit better than the paper used to wrap sausages. Bit smelly,’ she said, her dark eyes shining as she wrinkled her nose.
Despite the cold wind and her grumbling stomach, Magda suddenly felt warmer.
‘That would be lovely. Really lovely. Thank you.’
True to her promise, Emily Crocker waited until she saw Bridget Brodie on her way to the Red Cow. Her lips were red, her cheeks were rouged and she was wearing a fur coat that Emily reckoned really belonged to the invalid landlady of the Red Cow.
‘Look at ’er,’ she said to the other girls. ‘Done up like a dog’s dinner. And she got the nerve to call us slappers!’
‘Fur coat and no knickers,’ said her best friend Betty Cooper and went back to fastening a sequin-covered hair net over her crinkly dark hair.
‘I’m no expert, but I reckon that kid should be at school,’ said Emily. ‘I weren’t going to say anything because …’
‘It’s none of your business,’ said Winnie One Leg.
‘I knew you’d say that,’ muttered Emily. ‘I’m nipping over there in a minute to shove this under the door.’
Winnie peered at the pencil and paper and sniffed. ‘Can’t do no harm. Just make sure the Connemara mare’s left the end of the street before you do it. You know how she is; any excuse to call the rozzers.’
‘Shouldn’t we be calling somebody out to sort her – you know – the people who deal with child welfare?’
Winnie One Leg didn’t respond straight away. She was looking across the street, aware of a small shadow impairing the light from within.
‘Very likely,’ she said thoughtfully.
The girls exchanged shrugs and pulled faces. Winnie had something on her mind. Winnie could pull strings.
By the light of a street lamp Magda saw Emily Crocker sprinting across the road as fast as her court shoes could carry her.
Magda pulled the draught excluder – no more than an old stocking smelling of her aunt and stuffed with newspaper – away from the bottom of the door.
A cold draught came in first. Her eyes opened wide with delight as not one but three pencils were pushed underneath it, rolling around on top of a piece of stiff white cardboard and a writing pad. To her great joy an unopened box of crayons came in behind it.
It didn’t matter that the cardboard looked as though it had once been part of a shoe or shirt box. It didn’t matter that she’d have to cut the bits of card into shape just as she had the butcher’s paper. She had everything she wanted.
Wiser than to leave it downstairs in case her aunt returned unexpectedly, she went upstairs and replaced the butcher’s paper beneath her pillow with some of the card.
After cutting and folding a piece of card in half, she drew a fat robin on the front and wrote ‘Merry Christmas’ across the top.
What to write inside took more thought. Whilst thinking about it, she coloured in the robin; brown feathers, a red breast, black dot eyes and little yellow legs. Making the white background look like snow was more difficult, but patches of blue crayon seemed to work.
At last she opened up the card, picked up her pencil and wrote simply but sincerely.
‘To my sisters, Venetia and Anna Marie and my little brother, Mikey. I’m missing you very much. I can’t send this card today cos I have no stamps and don’t know where you are. I will keep it safe until I can give it to you. Love, Magda.’
Chapter Eight
Magda
‘You need to make a list,’ said Danny. ‘A list of the facts as you know them and the people connected with the last time you saw your family.’
They were sitting on a bench in the middle of Victoria Square sharing Danny’s cheese sandwiches.
Magda swallowed the very tasty piece of bread and cheese she’d been chewing.
‘The facts?’
‘Like your old man leaving you with your aunt. That’s a fact. Likewise ’im going off to sea. That’s a fact too. Then there’s the money he’s supposed to be sending – or not sending as the case may be. How does she receive it? Does it come through the post? Is there a return address? Or does somebody deliver it direct into her hands? Or does she collect it from somewhere or somebody? That’s the facts you’ve got to find out.’
‘That seems very wise.’
Danny looked pleased. ‘It’s the way Bob Barton does it. Set out the facts and deduce the evidence.’
‘I see.’
Danny passed her another sandwich.
‘Once we’ve sorted that out, we think about the people most likely to know the whereabouts of your sisters and brother – that’s besides the old witch you live with. Right?’
She nodded. ‘There’s Uncle James. He might know. I’ve not met him yet.’
‘I’ll make a note of that.’
Danny flicked the bread and cheese crumbs off the piece of paper on which he’d written his analysis of Magda’s situation.
‘Next I think we need to make enquiries at the workhouse you were in. They might have some idea.’
Magda swallowed and set her sandwich down. Suddenly she didn’t feel like eating.
‘My mother died there.’
He patted her hand then gave it a squeeze.
‘There were nice people there too. I remember a lady. Miss Burton. She was kind to us. She told me that normally we would have had to go to the orphanage, but seeing as it was Christmas she arranged for us to stay there until our father came to fetch us.’
‘And last but not least, we come to your father,’ said Danny after ticking off the former deduction. ‘Is there some way of finding out what ship he was on?’
Magda shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
Daniel glanced around him as though afraid of some menacing presence overhearing what he was about to say.
‘I’ve had a word with somebody in the know,’ he said, tapping the side of his nose. ‘He reckons that if you know the name of the ship or even the shipping company, they will let relatives know the name of the ship said relative has signed on. This l
ast course of action is only to be resorted to if all the others run up against the buffers. I mean, there’s a chance your aunt receives the money through a shipping company. If that’s the case, then we’ve got ’im cornered.’
Magda sat quietly thoughtful, her sandwich lying untouched on her lap.
‘I’m not sure my father sends any money and I’ve heard Aunt Bridget say that she never knows from one week to the next what ship Uncle James is on, so it would be the same for my father.’
‘Ah!’
‘I need to go there.’
‘You do? Um. Where exactly?’
‘The workhouse. I want to go there and ask them if they know anything.’
‘Great. I’ve got the afternoon off, we can both go there if you like,’ said Danny, brimming with enthusiasm. ‘Right. Now which workhouse would we be talking about?’
Magda looked at him startled. ‘Is there more than one?’
Danny rubbed at his eyes. ‘I’m afraid so. There’s a lot of poor in London and I did ’ear that a lot of them ’ave closed down. Still, we can always check can’t we – as long as we know the name. Do you know the name?’
Hearing Danny’s plans had raised her spirits. Those spirits were now dashed. She shook her head, tears of anguish stinging her eyes.
‘I can’t remember.’
They arranged to meet again once she’d had time to think things over. Her new friend was reassuring.
‘Memory is a funny thing. You think you’ve forgotten something and suddenly it pops up when you least expect it. It’ll ’appen to you, girl. No doubt about it.’
Danny was so self-assured she couldn’t help but believe him.
The day after it really did seem as though things were changing for the better. It began with a loud hammering on the front door.
Bridget Brodie wasn’t expecting anyone, so assumed whoever it was had got the wrong house.
‘Go away. This is a respectable house. You’ll be wanting over the road.’
Whoever it was took no notice but gave the door another series of knocks that reverberated throughout the house.
‘Whoever you are, you’re going to get a piece of my mind,’ snarled Aunt Bridget finally raising herself from her chair where she’d been picking horses from the newspaper for that afternoon’s racing at Kempton Park.