‘I help?’
He stands in the doorframe, an angular silhouette. Willa is so astonished at the sight of him that she forgets to be embarrassed by her investigation.
‘I … I did not hear you.’
This morning he had wrapped his queue around the top of his head so that he appears to be wearing a hat made of hair. She gawks outright. The front of his head is shaved, presenting a dichotomous image that confuses her, though it is his clothes that intrigue her most: a loose blue collarless jacket falls just below his knees. Long wide-legged trousers trail down to a pair of black, cotton slippers with platform soles made of cotton cording, perhaps with leather as well, she cannot tell. He looks monkish, a porcelain version. Though she is slowly becoming accustomed to the world’s people who float in and out of Limehouse, this is a rare one.
Jonesy approaches his bed and Willa jumps back, startling them both when they crash into each other.
‘The door,’ he says, when he recovers. ‘I will tap?’
She adjusts her cap and straightens her apron. The door opens into her side of the room; a further loss of her cherished privacy.
‘Well. Mr – I do not know your name.’
‘Jonesy.’
She pauses. Such a ridiculous name.
‘Well, Mr Jonesy.’
‘Jonesy Ling.’
Even more ridiculous, she thinks.
Her moving fingers distract him. She smells of grease and fire. He has seen another like her; madness is next if she is not careful. He sits down beside his box and opens it with the key he retrieves from his deep trouser pocket.
‘Well, Mr Jonesy Ling, I been here a short time, but I’m much adjusted to my own company, in my own room. I am from a place that were crowded, where I slept in a room with many girls. But this, what we have here is different.’ She bites the tip of her tongue to curb her chattering but it does not help.
‘’Tis too bad for me then that the door opens into my side of the room. So, no. I dunno know how you plan to spend your evenings, but I retire early. Do not wake me by tappin’ on the door. And if you have any decency about you at all, when you open the door, focus your entire self on this curtain. And then close it tight. And be quiet about it, if you please.’
He didn’t understand much of what she said, but feels he needs to offer her something.
‘Move? I sleep there?’ He points to her bed.
She cannot move her things. She has her rituals, everything is in its place, and she has access to the window. She shakes her head and her fingers commence their tapping again. Her breathing is shallow.
She is so visibly disturbed that he assures her. ‘No! No move, no move.’
Jonesy opens his wooden box and rattles around in it until he produces a bright green silk pouch. He unties the black string and empties its contents into his palm.
‘Cicada.’ How can he explain it to her?
‘Oh what a beautiful piece, Jonesy Ling.’ Her defences fall, she is suddenly transfixed.
Then she squints at him as if he has done something very bad.
‘Where did you get such a thing?’
‘I carve. White jade. Cicada.’
‘You carve? It looks cool, like ice. And smooth as cream.’
‘For you.’
‘Oh no, Jonesy Ling.’ She drops it on the bed. ‘It were wrong. I do not take gifts.’ She recalls many occasions upon which Matron tried to tempt her with gifts. A gift is never without conditions.
‘Friends.’ He offers again.
‘No, I cannot.’ She’s hesitant, but moved, and weakening because she has never received a genuine gift.
‘Please.’
Well, she thinks, it is very beautiful. And she cannot quash her desire to touch it.
‘Got nothin’ for you but I can knit and sew.’
‘Nothing required.’ He bows low.
‘Well, all right then, thank you, Jonesy Ling.’
‘Jonesy, please.’ Before he gives it to her he strokes the outline of the wings that are carved to appear folded underneath the insect.
‘Cicada. Chinese symbol for, um, very long life. Survives underground for long time, then comes up and flies. Flies to the sky. Um, forever … Symbol for … undying.’ He struggles to find the word.
‘Immortal?,’ Willa says.
‘Immortal,’ Jonesy repeats.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Francis Lawless diminishes each day from a withering illness that the doctors fail to identify; they consider he has lived a long life and as his death approaches there is really no need to label what overtakes him. Owen Mockett makes up the prescriptions for the laudanum to help ease his passing and cosset his dreams. It is the very least he can do for the Lawless family who have always been loyal customers.
George Fitzgerald’s legal team puts Francis’s affairs in order. There is more than a little sadness etched in the deep lines of his face. So intricately are the Lawless and Fitzgerald families entwined, with marriages, births and deaths.
Each time St Anne’s bell tolls the sisters are certain it is their father’s death knell. Claustrophobia settles in. There is no truly private place in the house. Their ailing father sleeps fitfully, and their well-intentioned cook, Bertie, their only live-in servant, has a natural ear to all conversation, even when she retires to an exhausted coma-like sleep.
An eagerness for a taste of the freedom that is a birthright of men has always gnawed at the sisters. How well their father knew it. As his dying countenance lies before her, Constance recalls that after the second tragedy of their lives bore down on them with the weight of iron, he gave them a choice. He would search for second husbands and she and Verity could live conventionally if they wished. Or, they could live their widowed lives unconventionally, as long as they applied themselves to something worthwhile. At the time, they were so heavy with grief they could not rise in the morning without dreading the day. He quickly realized they could make no such decision, so he made it for them. Francis whisked his daughters away from the scenes of their sorrows. He opened the doors of Europe to them in a Grand Tour wildly of his own making that followed no traditional itinerary. They returned to Limehouse forever changed.
During the restless years that followed, the sisters became primed to perform an act so daring that they would lay down their reputations for its cause.
Constance arrived home one day with a worn second-hand canvas haversack bulging with two suits of men’s clothing. She revealed the accepted uniform of a casual worker: trousers, shirts, waistcoats, loose fitting long jackets, two flat cloth caps and two pairs of dull boots.
The trousers offered such an extraordinary feeling of vulnerability and at the same time release, that at first the sisters’ gaits were awkward and exaggerated. At the completion of their transformation when they tucked their hair under the caps and wrapped neckerchiefs high to their chins, the mirror reflected that tall, thin men had come to roost. They sneaked from the house and stole into the night’s crisp air. They walked as men, free to discover London’s nocturnal underbelly.
On those nights when the wind suddenly howled, or when they were tired but still restless from their long walks, one of their father’s warehouses served as their private salon. The sisters bribed their father’s guards for two powerful hours of privacy in the dark fortress.
On these nights they became more of themselves when they shed a thin layer of the skin of their society. A society that of late seems to tighten and pinch like the corset that is a slave to the new waistline; its grip even more firm and prim in its quest for a curve.
It has been some months since they were last out. Gently they close the door that seals the deathbed air of their home and inhale the night as if it were their last breaths as well. They forgo their walk of discovery and stride quickly past the spars and rigging towering like menacing daggers thrust into the black sky.
Their father’s employee, Lewis the guard, paces to and fro, peeling around the building’s corners, s
tepping in time with the lapping water. He tips his hat to them. Verity slips a pouch of coins from her pocket and empties it into his leathery hand. Secrets are bought that might one day cause men to call them mad and scandalous, rather than two women who simply seek solace.
They grab the lanterns that rest on hooks by the door and take the stairs to the first floor. Carpets, rugs, and mats of all kinds are stored here, waiting to cover the floors of English parlours. They skirt past the corner where the skins of peacocks hang; their sup-erior feathers still attached, fan out into the room.
The air is pungent with the smell of tobacco that shoots down from the attic. Their boots stick to the leaked sugar on the floor. Silently they search for a space that is free of goods. There are eight rooms on this floor and in the sixth they find an empty aisle amongst the pipes of port. The long barrels with tapered ends stretch down the length of the room. Constance unrolls a fine Turkish rug and secures it onto the cast iron window frame then nods to Verity to light the larger lanterns.
Constance sits with her back supported by one of the barrels and removes the contents of the haversack. She fills the bowl of a pipe with tobacco and uses the slender remains of a taper to light it.
Verity pours from a crude Bohemian glass flask into two beakers. Apricot brandy, sweet and hot, stings their throats. Soon they are a little drunk.
‘I wish to talk about them tonight. I want to remember,’ Constance says.
‘I don’t.’
‘Why, Verity?’
‘It is not enough to keep telling each other stories of their short lives. It is not bearable.’ Verity’s voice rises. ‘The absent bodies … When we visit their empty graves and read aloud their names …’ Her voice breaks.
‘But you don’t!’ Constance shouts. ‘You never say their names. You won’t speak of them.’
‘And you never cease! I hear you in your room late at night. You talk to them as if they were sat beside you. It really is unsettling, Constance. You treat them as if they are ghosts.’
‘They are ghosts. And what of you? You retreat to your prayers to saints and clutch your beads and yet you still walk down to the water’s edge. You would be dead if I had not found you.’
‘That is not fair.’ Verity stands. ‘Do not dare speak of that one, single moment on an awful, awful night.’
They have drained their beakers and the flask, and the fug in the room makes Verity dizzy. Her burning eyes stream.
‘Not fair? To even consider leaving me here on my own?’ Constance accuses.
‘I was not going to do it.’
Constance stands, too, and as they face each other their frames create exaggerated contours against the barrels in the light of the lanterns. Shadow play catches Constance inching towards her sister.
‘William,’ Constance says. ‘My dear, lovely husband, William Fitzgerald.’
‘Don’t.’ Verity walks away.
‘Say it. Say his name, Verity.’ She stalks her sister down the aisle. ‘Say your husband’s name.’
‘Stop it.’
‘Say it!’
Stunned by Constance’s forcefulness, it tumbles out of her.
‘Sterling. Sterling Fitzgerald.’ Verity throws the words at her sister. ‘My husband, Sterling.’
‘Jack. My darling boy. My son, Jack Fitzgerald!’ Constance holds her sister firmly by her shoulders, yet she too is trembling. ‘Say it, Verity. Say your son’s name.’
‘Henry,’ Verity whispers. ‘Henry Fitzgerald, my lost son.’
The sisters, who had loved and married brothers, who had brought sons into the world, stagger after their roll call of the dead.
Leaning against a barrel, in the freedom of their trousers they slide to the floor, spent. It can take years for the purest bit of grief to crawl up out of its deep home.
‘Look at us,’ Constance says. ‘What would they say if they could see us here in this corner dressed as lightermen, reeking, our limbs spread like drunks.’
She offers Verity a weak smile, but it is met with sombre thoughts.
‘The lost bodies of our husbands and sons … it was like blotting out all traces of their existence.’ Verity’s frustration drops to a whisper. ‘We needed their bodies, Constance.’ She rests the back of her head against the cold, brick wall. ‘Otherwise, there is only a haunting. Dead – yet not dead.’
‘We will have our father’s body – in burial,’ Constance says.
‘It is not enough for me.’
Still a little drunk and dry-mouthed from the tobacco, they have lost track of the time. Neither speaks while they vacate the building.
The guard sits up against one of the outdoor sheds fast asleep. Verity relishes these last few moments when she can walk the streets without wearing her dark spectacles. She gazes upon a different sort of darkness. Sharper, almost blunt images cavort before her. A cat slinks by in a brilliant stripe of orange. The lettering painted across the boats and barges is surprisingly shiny. The rift between the sisters is made small against the power of night.
‘Constance, look there,’ Verity whispers. ‘Is that not Mrs Fowler from Three Colt Street?’
A woman in a long, dark cloak stands on a nearby boat, deserted but for the man who embraces her. The cloak’s hood has fallen away leaving her red mane shooting like a flare into the black night.
‘Indeed, it is. But that is not Mr Fowler who holds her close.’
Clovis jerks her head towards them as if she has heard the whispers. Her attention fully upon them now, she is struck by the familiar. These two men she has seen before, here or there, but no, not in this form. She has made it her business to know the wealthy widows on sight; trousers and a cap do not fool her.
Clovis throws her hood over her head and the sound of her laughter clings to the sisters’ backs as their footsteps recede.
Constance settles into her spot before the window on Fore Street, where she casts her gaze beyond the sail-less masts that look like crucifixes jutting up into the hovering mist. She shivers as the reliable London fog pushes in from the sea and travels above the water like a full sail, with only the single pane of glass between her and its wicked danger. She fears there is another danger to which Verity seems oblivious, and so she must grab it by the collar on her own.
When they go about their morning errands that lead them outdoors, and in the afternoon when the sisters take the air, Constance senses they are being watched. With that ever-present in her mind, she goes out alone today with the excuse of needing an item urgently from Mockett’s Apothecary. But Constance does not go to the Commercial Road. She ambles through the neighbourhood’s streets with no clear route. She makes herself seen on Three Colt Street and wends her way finally to St Anne’s churchyard where she waits by a distinctive pyramid monument. The church clock chimes in the tower outlined against the sky, its angles and corners in perfect symmetry. Every fifteen minutes it rings and it is not five minutes past the current chiming before Clovis Fowler appears.
‘Mrs Fitzgerald.’ Clovis is slightly breathless. ‘I have been looking forward to meeting you properly.’
‘Mrs Fowler.’ Constance’s voice cuts the air.
‘I was quite astonished to catch a glimpse of you and your sister a few nights ago.’
Constance is not drawn to reply.
‘There may be several reasons why you choose to wear men’s clothing. And really, it is of no concern to me. Although, I dare say others might attach a queer and abnormal reason,’ Clovis says lightly. ‘Equally, I trust that my presence that evening is no concern of yours. I would not like for a scene that was entirely innocent to be … misconstrued.’ Clovis musters her most engaging smile.
‘Mrs Fowler. If you follow me or my sister again, I will bring down the heavens upon your head.’
‘My goodness. Are you threatening me, Mrs Fitzgerald?’
‘Are you threatening me, Mrs Fowler?’
This has gone wrong. Clovis had intended to use their shared secrets to strike up a
conversation – not to threaten or be threatened. Her desire is to cultivate an acquaintanceship with the wealthy widows. Her miscalculation be damned; she must salvage it.
‘I apologize wholeheartedly.’ Clovis lowers her eyes as if she is hurt. ‘I have no intention of revealing your secret. I followed you only to seek a moment to speak to you without raising suspicion at your home, or mine.’
‘Mrs Fowler, if you are as innocent as you say, why must you “not raise suspicion”, as you put it?’
Clovis hesitates, annoyed that this has not gone her way.
‘I will not trouble you further.’
Clovis makes a sweeping turn and saunters off, her skirts brushing against the tombstones. She holds her head high and curses under her breath.
Dettu niður dauður gömul kona.
Drop dead, old woman.
The midwife covers the expectant mother’s eyes against the light of the Aurora to ease the pain of birth. Every fire in the settlement is lit to discourage supernatural interference. The midwife carries two delivery stones, wrapped in the hair of a virgin, to guarantee good health to mother and child.
His arrival is met with great joy and great sadness.
The law that requires the baby to be baptized in a church within seven days of birth is broken. This baby, born under a shroud of secrecy from the loins of the mother who has been changed, is taken to the Watcher before his journey across the sea.
CHAPTER TWENTY
1832
The tollhouse on the Commercial Road bulges today with the dock hauliers’ heavy carts that form ruts in the setts on the street. The taverns heave with freemasons, press gangs and lonely sailors, all hungry for gossip and a game of backgammon. Yet within this Sailortown, on this edge of the river where men seem so dominant a fixture, a remarkable number of women are found in a variety of trades. Nuzzled securely in this coterie of middling sort of women, Nora Mockett pins her focus outside the apothecary with a keen eye trained on the shop’s window.
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