by Gavin McCrea
He takes his cup from the tray and holds it out for pouring, but in a mean way, close to his chest, which obliges me to stand and reach over. And, now, just when I’m at my most uncertain, up on pointed toe and with no free hand to lean down on—she’s gone and brought me the pot that needs a finger to keep the lid on—he parts his whiskers to show his teeth (good and strong) and the front of his jacket to show the lining (silk, no less) and the lip of the inside pocket (abulge with money notes, a terrible lot of capital to have clear all at once). Tea pours over the lip of the cup onto the saucer and fountains down onto his fingers. He lets everything drop. Most of the tea ends up on his shirt and breeches. The wolsey—praise be—is saved.
While he prances and yells, I find myself calm. How queer his speech is, I think as I watch him dance across the carpet and pull the scalded clothes away from himself. How it has changed from before. As a man in his cholers, I wouldn’t have guessed him French. German or English perhaps. One of the efficient races. But not French.
Pumps comes in with the lemon. “Sir, are you all right?” she says.
“What does it bloody look like,” he says, as far from French as I am.
“Why don’t we get those off you, sir, and we’ll give you—”
“Pumps! Go get a cloth and fettle up this mess.”
Two curtsies, the scut manages, in the middle of the chaos.
“I’m awful sorry, Mr. Delacey,” I says, handing him some napkins, “my mind went elsewhere and I didn’t know where I was.”
“Mrs. Burns! It would do you well to train your mind on matters, particularly the handling of hot things. You would be surprised how many people are injured or even killed by accidents in the home.”
Fine advice. From a rebel.
We fall into an uneasy quiet. I could ask him about Paris and what he did and saw there, test him that way. But you never know with that. It can bring you to places you’d rather not be.
“Sandwich?” I says instead, and seeing now that they’re the ones left over from Sunday, I give them a sly sniff as I pass. Tolerable. He takes one and puts it in whole. Chews. Rearranges his crotch. Swallows.
I sip and shift round and am about to call time when he fixes me a stare. He pats his pocket, the one with the money, as if I’ve forgotten about it, a swelling as big as one of Karl’s carbuncles.
Says he: “So a chat, then, Mrs. Burns?”
I put my cup down, fold my arms across.
“Is there something you want, Mr. Delacey?”
“A quiet one, are you, Mrs. Burns?”
I ignore his wink. “What is it you want? I run a busy house.”
He takes up a second sandwich and begins to play with it. Turns it like a coin till the bread turns gray. Puts it back on the plate. “So what has Mr. Engels been up to this past while?”
I look past him, out the window.
“And Dr. Marx? How is his health?”
“I don’t know what it’s like in France but here, Mr. Delacey, you oughtn’t credit what you read in the papers.”
He leans towards me, arse lifting right off. “So you see a lot of him?”
“A lot of who?”
“Marx. Dr. Marx. The Red Terror Doctor.”
“What is it you’re after, Mr. Delacey?”
“Bah, nothing in particular, Mrs. Burns, anything you want to give me, any small thing.”
I rise to a stand. “I suggest you come back on Sunday.”
He stands too, and talks fast, his speech slipped right out of foreign. “Is it Marx who started the Paris Commune, Mrs. Burns?”
“It was the proletariat as did that.”
“But guided by Marx and the International, am I right?”
“You ought know more about it than me. You are a Communard, aren’t you?”
“Tell me, Mrs. Burns, now that Dr. Marx has waged war on one government, does he have plans to wage war on every government in the world?”
“If you’re looking for information on Dr. Marx’s activities, you ought read the Association reports, they’ll have what you’re looking for.”
I start to gather the tea things.
“Leave that, Mrs. Burns, I’ll be out of your hair in a jiffy, I just want to have a little chat with you, a head-to-head between friends.”
I pick up the teaboard. He tries to take it from me. I grip it tight. He pulls. I pull back.
“Boo!” he says, giving me such a fright that I go foot-totting backways. He clatters it down on the good table.
“You ought leave now, Mr.— ”
“What do you make of the rumors?”
“I try not to listen to blather. You listen to blather and you get to believing all species of things.”
“Wise words, Mrs. Burns, wise words. But isn’t it interesting, fascinating, I’d say, what they’re saying?”
“I don’t know what they’re saying about any cursed thing. Now it’s time for you—”
I make for the door, but he lunges forward and takes tight of my wrist. He puts a hand over my mouth, skin too soft for a soldier, the smell of scented water. I’m not afraid. I look into his eyes and see his own fear, and that way I’m not afraid. Slow, he takes his hand away and steps back. Before I start screaming there’s a moment, an empty moment, when there’s naught but stillness between us. He breaks it with a wink.
“Get out!” I’m so loud I can hear myself against the walls. “It’s not a bit of a Frenchman you are and I want you out!”
“Oh now, Mrs. Burns, what’s all this? Let’s calm down now, shall we?”
“I’ll howl the road down, don’t think I’ll not.”
“Now now, darling, just a couple of minutes, that’s all I’m after. We’re looking for the inside track. The story behind the story. Inside the home of the Revolution. The other half gets her say.”
“Out, I said. Out!”
He shows his hands in the manner of “I surrender.” “All right, all right, you win,” he says. “But just in case you change your mind.” He reaches into his jacket, slides a card and a money note, a whole five-jack, between a cup and the pot. “And there’s more where that came from,” he says, and is gone.
The door slams.
Rain.
Pumps comes in looking pale.
“Nay, child,” I says, “I’ll clear this. Go put the chain on the street door. And don’t tell Frederick about any of it.”
I take the teaboard down to the kitchen. A stitch in my chest but steady hands. I throw the card in the stove, bide till it burns away. The money note, I’ve already slid into my sleeve.
XXIV. Eruption of the End
It’s all quiet at the Marx house. Nim opens the door only wide enough to peep.
“I was passing,” I says.
She makes room for me and I step in, but no farther than the matting.
“I’m not staying. I just wanted to give you this.”
I hand her the money note in an envelope I’ve asked Pumps to prepare: “Helen” written in big letters.
“What’s this?”
“I don’t know,” I lie. “Something from Frederick.”
She looks at it, suspicious, but now puts it away.
“She’s in her room,” she says.
“Oh, she’s here? I thought, with the quiet, she was out.”
She shakes her head, mournful, and points me up.
There’s no sound in Jenny’s room apart from the clock ticking. I almost don’t notice her sat in a chair by the window, a blanket too heavy for the season spread over her. She turns to me without a greeting. I go and stand in front of her. She takes my skirts and pushes her face into them.
Soul of my body, what is it now?
“Laura has lost the baby.”
I go cold. I’m a monster.
“Oh, Jenny, that’s terrible. When?”
“Two weeks ago, but with the state of the French post, we only got the news yesterday.”
She covers her face. Tears escape. She falls forward and gi
ves herself onto me. And now she weeps out. All down my front. At first I’m kept stiff and ungiving by the mean crook of my spirit that continues to look black on her, but my palsy gives way to shame and sadness when, by some higher interference, I come to understand there’s no harm in what she’s doing; it’d do the sorry world good if we all sat down and cried out for ourselves. I take strong of her and bring her into me, holding her head so she’ll not raise it and see the water that now comes from my own eyes, for my own sins, and the babbies I could never have as a consequence of them.
Like this we are, for a long time. Long enough for the light in the room to change, for the heat of the day to dry the swelter off my back and to put it back there again.
Jenny draws away. I give her the tissue from my sleeve to wipe herself with. She thanks me without looking. She’s found in the shades of the empty fireplace a place to put away what she’s let out.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
I touch her shoulder and keep there. “What is Laura going to do?”
She shakes her head. “It is no longer safe for Paul, and he has crossed into Spain. She has stayed behind with the boy, who is himself ill with dysentery.” She puts a hand to her mouth and shuts her eyes. “God, if anything happened to him now, that would just be the end.”
“Naught of the sort will happen. Aren’t Janey and Tussy there with her? They’ll make sure she and the boy are well looked after.”
Jenny sucks her lips in and nods. “Karl has written and told them to follow Paul across the border, where at least they will not be arrested. But I think they should just come home. Find a ferry that will take them and go.”
“They’ll come home soon enough, don’t you worry.”
“Oh, Lizzie, thank you for saying it, but I find it hard to believe.”
“Oh, Jenny, whisht now.”
I bring her over to the bed so we can sit side-by-side.
“Karl has taken this news very hard. He is beside himself.”
“It’d be hard for any grandfather.”
“It is the drop that has made the vase overflow. With all the extra work the exiles have made, he was already suffering from overstrain. But now? Now he is on the edge of falling down. And I cannot help but be affected also.”
“Jenny, it is only normal to feel it.”
“You are lucky, Lizzie. It is different for you. And you have Frederick. A man of action rather than emotional reflection. An uncomplicated man, a man on the move. And with such an appetite for life, life as it is. I can’t imagine him suffering in the same way.”
“I’m not sure about that, Jenny. He’s had his share of losses. We all have. Now come, no more talking. Let’s get you lying down.”
I guide her head to the pillow.
“I don’t want to sleep,” she says, but she stays put.
I sit beside her till she goes off.
“It’s going to be all right,” says Mary, and at first I think that, because we’re in Smithfield Market buying our vittles, she means we’re all right for brass and have enough to cover us for the week.
“Aye,” I says, “we ought be all right,” and wave at the fishmonger to put more shrimps onto the scales. “We’ll get these as a treat, and if we run low, we can have turnips and taters till we’re flush again. No point scrimping or we’d never have anything nice to put on the table.”
Hearing me go on, she laughs and tells the monger to throw in a few mussels to make a proper measure. “My piggy little sister Lizzie,” she says, “your mind has but a single track. I’m not talking about money!”
“You’re not?”
“I’m not.”
“What are you talking about, then?”
“I’m talking, Lizzie, about this.”
She opens her shawl to show her tummy. She pats it open and public.
“Well, pray forgive me, Mary, but aren’t the two subjects one and the same? Isn’t a babby by Frederick like a hen that shits gold?”
She gives me a face. I jab her an elbow. The monger clears his throat. I take the fish from him and put it in the basket.
“What I mean is,” she says, “I can tell this one’s going to be all right.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I says, for I’ve learnt that going against her is only another way of convincing her of her rightness.
“It’s going to be a healthful little boy.”
“A boy will be lovely, Mary.”
She takes my arm and leads me away: she leads me, the sick guiding the sound. We go through the rest of the Market without seeing anything worth halting for. I don’t understand why we still come here at all. The eatables are low in grade and the place is infested with Irish. I can’t see any reasonable sense to traipsing all this way up when we can well afford the shops over where we are. And what’s else, I don’t understand why she insists on coming with me. I’m well capable of doing the shopping without her escort. I just hope it’s not because she still wants the busy world to see her illness and to make tavern talk out of it. I hope she’s learnt her lesson after that holy rup-and-rumble at Trafford Park. Or is that hoping against itself?
We come out on High Street. My idea is to catch a bus outside one of the factories on Great Ancoats. I try to steer us onto the nearest course there. I ought know better, however, than to have my own ideas when it’s in Mary’s company I am. On Thomas Street she tugs at my sleeves and drags me in the direction of Deansgate.
“Come,” she says, “I want to show you something.”
“Not a chance. I want to get home and cook this fish before it rots the whole way.”
“Arrah, don’t be such an old woman and come on.”
A shortcut through the warehouses, a turn by the dressmaker’s, a skip and a march, and she has me stood at the window of a shop, upper-quality if the people coming in and out are to swear by.
“What am I supposed to be looking at?” I says, playing blind to the babby’s crib in the display.
“Don’t give me that,” she says. “You can see it well and good.”
And in fairness it’d be hard to miss, it’s such a roaring festoon of a thing: flowers carved into the wood and silk bows tied onto the frame and butterflies pinned to wires and hovering over.
“What do you think?” she says.
“I think it’s a bit early to be thinking about cradles.”
“Nonsense. No new mother wants to be caught with everything to do at the last minute. Better to get these things early. He’ll be out and born before we know it.”
Letting out a satisfied titter, she draws me closer to the window, then closer again, till my skirts are wiping the glass.
“Isn’t it just the nattiest?” she says.
“Gorgeous,” I says. “Now, is that it? Is that everything you wanted me to see?”
She scowls at me. Takes my bonnet strings and yanks them down. “Damn your arse, Lizzie, would you ever grow a bit of patience?”
Before I’ve the chance to fix myself or even understand I’ve been unfixed, she has me parading again, this time down the street past the toy shops and round the pub on the corner.
“Where in hell’s name are we going now?” I says.
“Shh,” she says, hastening her stride. “For once, can’t you just flow along?”
Ring-a-ding-ding! We’re in through the door of somewhere. A shop. A shop with only one small square window in the front that gives so little opportunity for light it requires gas even during the day. The bit of sun that does stray in is caught and turned brilliant by the shelves of porcelain and silver that run round the walls to cover every inch; every inch except the bit of the back wall where a tiny door has been cut, and where now a man—lanky as a pole and yellow as a crow’s foot—is bending through. He stops before he comes all the way out. Stays with his head and feet on this side and his arse on the other. Speaks with surprising force for a body folded into such an arrangement.
“Mrs. Engels!” he says. “How delightful to see you again!”
&
nbsp; “Mr. Lambert,” Mary says. “Always a pleasure.”
“Give me one moment, my dear. I’ve to finish something in here and I’ll be right out.”
“Take your time.”
Once alone, I take her wrist and rasp into her ear. “Explain to me, please, what we’re doing here.”
“Ow,” she says, “get off.”
“Well?”
“Come on to feck, Lizzie. What do you think we’re doing here?”
“Oh, this is dandy, this is just effin’ dandy.”
And I don’t bother to give out more than that, for I know there’ll be no gain got from crossing her. My only comfort is that this appears to be a higher class of slop-shop than I’m used to. It seems, at least, to be the species where your things are taken for hard coinage instead of the usual fags and gin.
While we wait, I can’t help tapping out my irritation on the counter. Meantime, Mary ogles the loot.
“Oh, look at those,” she says, pointing to a set of silver tea things. “They must be worth a pretty penny. The poor sods can’t have been happy losing them.”
I look away, but find there’s no place to look to. Left and along the racks: boots and braces and the lives of bodies hung. Right and up to the ceiling: plates and forks and spoons, Manchester’s hunger brimming over. Down and beneath the glass of the counter: a thousand private pockets turned out, snuff boxes and fob watches and card holders—
I close my eyes to it all, but then there’s still Mary tee-heeing beside me—what side of this place can she possible find funny?—and the smell of emery powder and benzene to keep my stomach keeling. After what feels like a generation, Lambert stoops through the door and, with a crack of his brittles, opens himself to his tallest stature.
“So what can I do for you?” he says. “Are we buying or selling today?”
“We’re selling, Mr. Lambert,” Mary says.
“Good, good,” he says, rubbing his hands like I suppose he’s expected to. “And what do you have for me?”
“Something special,” she says.
“I like special,” he says.
“In that case”—she takes her shawl off her shoulders and puts a finger on her brooch, the one with the green stones set in the shape of a clover—“you’re going to like this.”