Jubilee (Book 1 of The Poppy Chronicles)

by Claire Rayner

  An odd-looking boy, Mildred thought, staring at him. He had thick curly hair, the thickest she could ever remember seeing, so curly that even from this height, a storey above the street, she could see its springiness, almost feel it beneath her fingers. The boy looked up then, and for a moment it seemed he had heard her thoughts, had even felt her imagination’s hand on his head, for he was staring at her.

  But he was not; he was checking the number of the house with whatever was on a piece of paper he held in his hand, and she could see him more clearly now and found him even more exotic. A tanned skin, dirty but still a rich soft colour, and eyes so dark and lustrous that she felt he could see her, even here hidden behind her curtains, and she shrank back. But he didn’t see her, for he looked again at his paper and then, to her amazement, ran quickly up the steps of the house.

  Amazement, because there was no doubt the boy with the thick hair and the rich dark eyes was a street arab. His clothes were several sizes too big for him, his boots were battered and all too painfully oversized, and he was exceedingly dirty. What was such a one doing at the front door of Edward Amberly, Esquire, hardware merchant and would-be Alderman of the City of London? Even at the kitchen door, down in the area below, he would have been out of place. Cook or Freddy, the all-purpose man who doubled as butler, valet for Papa, and boot boy, would have sent him packing very quickly. Yet here he was, running up their front steps like any gentleman and ringing the bell.

  For she heard it pealing through the house, and stood there with her amazement dissolving into excitement. Something was happening to improve this particularly bad evening; a street arab was ringing at their door, and so sterile and dismal was life for Mildred Amberly on that evening of 17 September 1893, that the event constituted an adventure. And she threw her sewing on to the window seat and ran to the door and out to the head of the stairs to meet it.

  2

  ‘It’s all right, Freddy,’ she said swiftly as she reached the hallway with its black and white squares glowing in the puddles of dark blues and golds and greens that were thrown on to them by the gaslight on the other side of the stained glass of the front door. ‘I’ll deal with it, whatever it is.’

  Freddy stood and blinked at her, his hand on the green baize door that led to the servants’ part of the house and then shrugged slightly and went away, but this time she wasn’t angered by his unspoken contempt. The fact that the senior servants despised her as a dreary old maid, just as her father did, rankled sometimes. But not tonight; tonight she was filled with a sort of reckless anger that was more exciting than distressing. Tonight she’d do what she wanted, and to the devil with whatever anyone thought of her. And she whispered the words aloud as she struggled with the door fastening, feeling daring and outrageous to be using such language, she, a well-bred woman. ‘To the devil with you,’ she whispered and then pulled the door open and stood there staring at the boy on the front step.

  At close quarters he looked even more exotic. His eyes, those dark and lustrous eyes, were sharp and knowing and he looked up at her and then, with a swift flick of his eyelids, beyond her into the hallway, and almost as though she were inside his head she saw what he saw; the rich mahogany furniture, the big paintings in their heavily gilded frames, the thick red turkey carpet, the gleam and glitter of brass stair rods and doorknobs, a place that breathed money, and, suddenly prudent, she pulled the door partly closed behind her.

  ‘Well, young man? What do you want?’

  ‘More’n you can give us, lady, and that’s no error,’ the boy said perkily. His voice was husky, pitched deliberately low and she thought – he’s very young. No more than fourteen or fifteen. Basil and Claude had sounded like that when their voices were breaking, and that thought made her relax. Just a child, that was all he was, no one at all exciting or threatening. Her spirits, which had been so suddenly high, sagged again.

  ‘We don’t give to beggars at the door,’ she said sharply, and she stepped back to go inside and close the door on him and at once his dirty face reddened furiously.

  ‘Who are you callin’ a schnorrer?’ he demanded. ‘I don’t go beggin’ and don’t you never say I do! I ain’t no schnorrer!’

  She blinked. ‘No what?’

  He laughed then, a bubble of sound that she liked and she stood uncertainly, not sure whether to go in and slam the door as she had meant to, or stay where she was, and he grinned and said, ‘Cor, you’re an ignorant lot here up West, ain’t yer? Schnorrer, lady, schnorrer. Beggar, scrounger, on the old ear’ole. I ain’t one o’ them. I earn my living straight, I do. Work dealt with, commissions executed, confidential transactions undertaken. You name it, I’ll do it. That’s why I’m ’ere. Commission executed, that’s what this is. You Miss –’ and he peered. ‘– Amberly? Eh? Miss M. Amberly, are yer?’

  ‘Who are you?’ All her caution was up in arms again, and she stood there with one hand behind her, holding the heavy door close to her back, ready to push it open and spring back inside at the first hint of trouble from this boy. Young as he was, he was well muscled, and tall for his apparent age; not a person to try to deal with if he became threatening. For the first time she wished she had let Freddy answer the doorbell after all.

  ‘Eh? Oh, I’m Ruby Blackman,’ the boy said. ‘Not that that’s got anythin’ to do with anythin’ –’

  ‘Ruby?’ She spluttered with sudden laughter. ‘A girl’s name!’

  ‘Ere up West, it might be. Where I comes from it ain’t,’ the boy said with dignity. ‘Reuben, then, if yer must know. And it ain’t got no connection with the matter in ’and anyway. Are you this ’ere Miss Amberly? If you ain’t, I’m wasting my time.’

  The fear was ebbing away now; to be afraid of a boy called Ruby seemed too absurd. ‘You’re not wasting your time. I am she. What do you want?’

  ‘At last!’ the boy said with exaggerated patience. ‘All right, then. This ’ere’s for you, an’ I’m to wait, so sharp about it. I got more to do than ’ang round ’ere.’ And he reached importantly into the pocket of his waistcoat, a vivid if singularly dirty affair of deep green satin stripes, and produced a large turnip watch which he looked at, frowned, and then twirled on its chain so that it slipped neatly back into its hiding place. ‘Much better things.’

  She looked down at the folded paper he had thrust into her hand and then, frowning, stepped forwards slightly so that the light from the lamp post just beyond the house could fall on it. And then felt a sudden lurch of fear as she recognized Basil’s rather childlike scrawl.

  ‘Dear Mildred,’ he had written. ‘This messenger will bring you to me and Claude. Take a four-wheeler, not a hansom, it must be a four-wheeler, and come at once with the messenger. Bring money.’ This was underlined in several thick scrawls. ‘Don’t tell anyone what you’re doing. This is urgent. I am relying on you. At once.’ And again the thick underlinings before the scrawl of Basil’s signature, the one he’d been practising for some months now. She recognized it with no trouble at all; this was a genuine message from Basil; there could be no doubt of it.

  ‘But this is ridiculous.’ She said it aloud, staring at the note and then at the boy Ruby. ‘Things like this only happen in silly story books.’

  ‘Up West maybe they do,’ the boy said sapiently. ‘Down East, anythin’ can ’appen and usually does. We got better things to do than read stories. We do ’em, we don’t read ’em.’ And again he produced that bubble of laughter.

  ‘Where are they? The – the people who sent this?’

  ‘It’s true then? You’re ’is sister, that tall fella? A right droopy devil ’eis – an’ the other one. Not safe out without their mothers, those two. Or nurses as the case might be.’ And again he peered over her shoulder to look into the house through the narrow aperture left by the front door.

  ‘Where is – where are they?’ She made no move to block his view now; he was no would-be robber. His curiosity was just that, a simple and clearly lively interest in everything he saw.
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  ‘I ain’t at liberty to divulge,’ he said with great dignity and then flicked a glance at her. ‘Which is bleedin’ silly, on account of yer goin’ to see the place anyway. Down Flower and Dean Street, Spitalfields.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Spitalfields. Other side o’ Aldgate Pump. Honestly, ’ow narrer can a person be? Ain’t you lived in London long, then?’

  ‘All my life,’ she said, stung. ‘Here in this house –’

  ‘Poor cow –’ the boy said, staring at her and then grinned, showing rather uneven dirty teeth. ‘I mean, got all the trimmings, ain’t yer? Fancy ken like this, carpets all over the place, lights and all – probably got privies inside ‘n’ everythin’, eh? But never done no living, eh? Not like down East. That’s livin’ if you like – the Whitechapel Road or Shoreditch High Street of a Saturday evenin’, oh, you should see it! Tarts togged up to the nines and the fellas – well, you wouldn’t credit the way some of ’em looks! An’ you’ve never bin down there –’ He shook his head, pityingly. ‘Just shows yer, don’t it? You can seem to ’ave it all and ’ave nothin’ at all, really. Never been down East – sad, that’s what it is, sad. Real sad –’

  She was scarlet with mortification. Bad enough everyone here in her own home pitied and despised her; to have this street urchin doing so was more than anyone could be expected to bear and she opened her mouth to say something blistering but he forestalled her, putting out both hands towards her, palms upwards, in an oddly appealing gesture.

  ‘Not that I means to blame you, lady. I mean, you can’t ’elp it if you got a rotten life, can yer? It’s different for those creeps of fellas down at Lizah’s – they can do what they like, or thinks they can. But you, bein’ a female – well, it’s not right, is it? Are yer comin’, then?’

  ‘To – what was it you said?’ It was simpler and perhaps less shaming to ignore all he had said about the narrowress of her life of which she was too painfully aware already. ‘Lizah’s? Who is she?’

  The boy tipped up his chin and stared at her again and then roared with laughter, so loudly and with such gusto that Mildred threw a nervous glance over her shoulder to see if anyone had heard and would come investigating.

  ‘Who’s she? Oh, that’s rich, that is, really rich an’ ripe. Wait’ll I get back an’ tells ’em all that one – who’s she? Listen, you come an’ see for yerself.’ He sobered then and gazed at her solemnly. ‘You’d better. They wants yer, these fellas, they really does. If they’re what you say, your brothers an’ all, it’s my advice to you to come and ’elp ’em out.

  They got problems, and that’s the truth of it. An’ I’ve spent enough time gettin’ ’ere as it is. Omnibuses ain’t what they ought to be. But we’re goin’ back in a four-wheeler, they said. So, you go and get your necessaries an’ I’ll whistle up a cab –’ and he turned to go.

  ‘Wait a moment –’ She stood uncertainly staring down at him. He had reached the pavement now and was looking back up to where she stood poised on the top step, and she looked at the rough curly hair and the deep dark eyes and tried to think rationally.

  To go with so odd a person as this merely because Basil had sent her a note telling her to do so – it had to be the most foolhardy thing anyone could possibly do. Basil hadn’t said why she was to do it, or anything at all except to come; and for a moment she remembered all the tales she had read in those long dull evenings alone in the drawing room when Papa was at those interminable City dinners of his and Mama was yet again in her room sleeping off her day’s sherried exertions, tales in which just such messages came to ladies, just such as she, alone in their houses, and who suffered extraordinary experiences as a result of obeying them –

  But this wasn’t happening in one of Mr Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories in The Strand magazine. This was happening in real life, here in her own boring Leinster Terrace, and she lifted her chin and took a deep breath in through her nostrils, trying to convince herself even more of the reality of what she was experiencing. She smelled the wet earth and greenery from Hyde Park and the soft reek of burning coal from chimneys already belching grey smoke, even though it was still September and the weather warm, and horses and the rain-settled dust and a pungent whiff of dirt and food that was probably the boy who was still standing impatiently looking up at her, and remembered all at the same time the dreadfulness of the day and what Papa had said about her, and how the long empty days of her life stretched ahead of her and thought – why not? Even if it is a dangerous thing to do, why not? Whatever happens, it will be better than sitting here putting smocking stitches in Harold’s nightshirt, better than knowing how useless and ugly they all think me, better than –

  ‘I shall be as soon as I can. Don’t fetch the cab here, I prefer not to be – it will be better to find one in Bayswater Road. I shall be quick.’ And she turned and went back, not looking again at the boy, knowing he would wait there for her.

  It wasn’t until she re-emerged, her straw hat with the blue feathers firmly pinned to the bun on the top of her head and her blue jacket buttoned over her cream serge day dress, that she thought again about where she might be going with this odd youth, and was glad that she hadn’t troubled to change into an evening gown at dinner time; there was no need if Papa was not to dine, and she had been grateful for that. Now she was grateful again, feeling certain that evening wear would have been quite excessive for where she was about to go.

  ‘This way,’ she said curtly to the boy as she reached his side beneath the lamp post and she began to walk hurriedly along, glad that there was a drift of fallen leaves on the paving stones to muffle her footsteps. No one had seen her re-enter the house or leave it, and there had been no sound from anyone as she closed the door softly behind her, but she was suddenly afraid someone would come running after her to stop her, Mama perhaps, or the hateful Freddy, or even the four little boys from the nursery, chasing after her in their nightshirts down the street towards the traffic of the Bayswater Road.

  She pulled her wandering thoughts together, and said a little breathlessly over her shoulder, ‘We should be able to find a cab at Lancaster Gate. They’re always there for hire, during the day time at any rate,’ and then caught her breath in alarm again, for she realized now just how dark it had become. The sun had fully set and the sky was a deep indigo above the serried lamps that threw their soft glow down on to the pavements, and she shivered slightly and tucked her elbows even more firmly into her sides.

  There were indeed cabs at Lancaster Gate, the drivers leaning nonchalantly against the gateposts of the Park entrance waiting for fares, and she hung back, alarmed again. To call on one of those rough-looking men by herself? It was a terrifying thought for someone who only ever rode in cabs with her parents, and then only in such vehicles as had been carefully chosen by Freddy, and brought to the front door, but the boy Ruby had no such qualms.

  ‘’Ere, you, cabbie!’ he called loudly and swung himself up onto the step of the first cab in the row as the horse between its shafts lifted its head from its plaited straw nosebag and whinnied softly in surprise. ‘Take us East, will yer?’ And he opened the door and hopped inside with all the energy of an eager hare, and then leaned down to reach out a grimy hand for Mildred, who still hung back.

  ‘Get yer filthy hide out o’ my cab, you!’ roared one of the men who detached himself from the knot by the gateway and came lurching towards them. ‘I don’t ply for hire for the likes o’ you –’

  ‘The lady’s payin’,’ Ruby said loftily. ‘Come on, Miss Amberly! We ain’t got all night, y’know! You’ve gotta wait an’ come back ’ere. There’ll be two other young gentlemen to come wiv ’er, too. Now, will yer get a move on? Fare both ways – you don’t get that every evenin’ and don’t you pretend as you does. There’s more flies on that pathetic object you calls your nag than there is on me, mate –’

  The man stopped and stared at Mildred and then at Ruby, now sitting comfortably ensconced in the corner of the cab, his feet in
their highly regrettable boots sprawling and then back at Mildred again.

  ‘You goin’ wiv ’im?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said after a moment and lifted her chin and stepped forwards, ashamed now of her timidity and the man spat, aiming at the ground at her feet and she stopped and looked at him sharply, at the expression of scorn on his face, and her temper swelled and grew and blossomed. ‘Ruby!’ she cried loudly. ‘That cab is not fit for my use. Leave it at once and select another.’

  The boy leaned forwards and poked his head out of the cab door and stared at her and then slowly grinned and she raised her brows at him, and immediately he jumped out of the cab and pulled on the front of his hair with an exaggerated gesture of subservience.

  ‘Yes, Miss Amberly, at once Miss Amberly, anythin’ you says, Miss Amberly!’ he chirruped and ran along the line of cabs, peering and prodding at the horses so that they stamped and blew chaff from their nosebags and the cab drivers by the gate watched and laughed.

  ‘I’ll take yer,’ the first cabman growled but Mildred swept past him to the cab that Ruby had now chosen and climbed in and settled herself, and the driver of the new cab came across and settled himself on the driving seat and then leaned down to speak to her, grinning all over his heavy face.

  ‘Where to, then?’

  ‘Flower and Dean Street, my man!’ Ruby said loftily. ‘On the corner o’ Brick Lane past Aldgate. And sharp about it, wait to return ’n all – now move!’

  ‘Right sir,’ the driver said and whipped up his horse and with a lurch and a loud rattling of harness the cab moved away and Mildred sat and stared out at the familiar Bayswater Road swinging past, the houses and railings seeming to dip and dive with every movement of the wheels, and tried to think what she was doing and why she was doing it. To be sitting in a cab with a dirty boy with a girl’s name going to the notorious East End of London in a four-wheeler, after dark – it was unheard of, incredible, a dreadfully wicked thing to do.