A Dangerous Duet

by Karen Odden

  Any other time, I’d have asked her if something was wrong, but now I hurried to Amalie’s room and knocked.

  “Who is it?”

  “Ed Nell.”

  She opened the door and peered through the crack. “Can I come in?” I asked.

  “So long as you don’t mind if I finish dressing.” She kept herself behind the door and locked it behind me.

  She wore only her white chemise and drawers, thin white garments that concealed little. A few months ago, I might have been embarrassed by her lack of modesty, but now I saw that this was a practiced role, put on night after night, with very little of her true self in it. I glanced around the room, at a costume dangling from a hook on the wall, a full-length mirror murky at the corners, a chaise longue upon which lay some undergarments and scarves. She made her way back to the dressing table and sat down. In the light from the two lamps, I could see the faint lines at the corners of her eyes and between her brows, and her cheeks looked a sickly yellow rather than a flirtatious pink.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  I stood behind her, so that I could see her face in the mirror. “Have you seen Jack tonight?”

  She snorted and began to twist her hair in a coil around her head. “No. Why?” In her accent, it came out “Woy.”

  “I need to talk to him is all.”

  “You don’t need to keep up the pretense of your voice.” Her eyes darted toward my chest, and she gave a small, knowing laugh. “Not much to show it, but I know you’re a girl, and you’re here because you want to go to the Academy.” With practiced fingers, she inserted half a dozen pins into the coil to fix it in place.

  A pinprick of doubt; and I had to ask, “Who told you?”

  “Stephen.”

  Naturally. Ashamed that I’d suspected Jack, even for a second, I merely said, “Ah.” Mindful that she was Jack’s friend, I felt it was only right to say, “You might want to be careful about him.”

  She met my eyes in the mirror and let out a laugh that sounded genuinely amused. “You’re giving me advice? That’s rich. Don’t worry, I’ve seen his sort before.”

  “What sort is that?”

  “The sort who’s told so many lies he’s begun to believe them.” She inserted four sparkling combs into her hair. “Shiny as silver on the outside and black as rot in his heart. That boy’s his own, and that’s all.”

  The accuracy of her assessment surprised me, though I suppose it shouldn’t have. “I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean to insult you. It’s just that it was a while before I saw through him myself.”

  She turned around to face me. Her expression had softened some. “No need to be begging my pardon. But I’ve been here nigh eight years, and I’ve seen plenty of folks come and go, including liars like Stephen, and two-bit tarts who think somebody in the audience’ll marry ’em if they lift their skirts, and even some hopeful sorts like yourself. Eight years ago, I might’a been much the same as you, thinking this would only be for a year or two, till I made enough money to do something else.” A pause, and she shrugged and smiled. “Life has a way of changing plans, sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the better.”

  “Jack told me you could’ve gone to the Academy, if you wanted,” I said. “That you have a perfect memory for words and songs.”

  Her hands paused in the act of taking her costume off the hook. “He’s a good bloke,” she said finally. “Always has been, even when—”

  A hard banging at Amalie’s door startled us both. Amalie shouted, the Cockney thick on her tongue, “Who the blasted ’ell is it?”

  A man’s voice, demanding, “Is Ed Nell in there?”

  I opened the door, careful to keep whoever it was from peering inside.

  Sid Lowry’s furious eyes met mine. “What the devil are you doing? The curtain was supposed to go up ten minutes ago! Williams is going to tan yer hide!” He grabbed my arm, dragged me into the corridor, and shoved me in front of him.

  I stumbled up the stairs. The crowd was already rumbling and hissing, the air loud with catcalls and whistles, cries of disapproval and disdain.

  I came through the curtain, sat down, and began to play. For the first time in my life, the keys felt dead to me, my fingers worked like soulless machines, and the sounds of the music hall came as if from a distance, much farther away than the fear rising to a crescendo in my brain.

  I GOT THROUGH THOSE TWO HOURS SOMEHOW. The minute I finished, I shoved my music into the portfolio, snatched up my coat, and hurried to the back hallway. I came upon Sid. “Have you seen Jack?”

  He looked at me strangely. “He’s out back. Just came from—”

  But I was already gone, slipping in something wet on the ramp, grabbing for the wall, pushing at the door. The catch was stiff, and my fingers turned and twisted. I let out a small cry. For pity’s sake, just turn—

  The door jerked open and I fell into him. “Jack.” I buried my face in his chest, and his arms were around me at once.

  “Nell! What’s the matter? Amalie said you were looking for me, so I waited . . .”

  I pushed back, away from his chest, and stared up into his face. But my thoughts were such a muddle I couldn’t speak. The two lanterns on either side of the door lit most of the yard. He drew me around the corner, to a place where we could be in the shadows but still see each other. Then he put his hands on my shoulders and turned me toward him. “Now,” he said. “Steady on. What is it?”

  I swallowed. “Jack, I know about your father . . . and about the boys who live here . . . and . . . and what they do.” His eyes widened, his lips parted, but he kept silent. I swallowed again, knowing I had to ask, but not sure I wanted to hear the answer he was going to give. “How much are you involved in this?”

  A long pause, and then, quietly: “What do you guess?”

  “I’m guessing . . . I’m hoping . . . that it’s as little as you can be.” My voice cracked, I was so desperate to have him confirm my version of the truth. “And that you’re only involved because of your father.”

  He dropped his hands off my shoulders and shoved them in his coat pockets. The world shrank to those few square feet of ill-lit dirt. Finally, I could no longer stand it. “Jack. Just tell me. You said it was important that two people could tell each other the truth.”

  “It is, and I’m not going to lie to you. But I can’t tell you unless you promise not to tell anyone. Not even your brother”—he cocked his head—“although maybe he knows a good bit already.”

  “I’ve told him nothing, Jack, I promise.” I leaned back against the brick wall, glad to feel its sturdiness against my spine. I swallowed down the feeling of disloyalty to Matthew. “And I won’t tell him anything you say now.”

  “All right, then.” His eyes locked on mine. “I’ve wanted to get quit of it since last year, and I’m in it now less than I was. But I came here of my own choice. I needed the money.”

  “But you were working for your uncle—”

  “Not enough.”

  “—and earning your living as a—as a boxer.”

  He looked a question.

  “Stephen told me.”

  Jack’s mouth twisted. “Well, he’s right. I did, for a while.”

  “Why did you stop? Did you get hurt?”

  “No.”

  “Were you arrested?”

  “No.”

  I felt as if we were back to that first day in the alcove, when I had to drag answers out of him. “Then why?”

  “Because they asked me to throw one.”

  “Throw what?”

  “Lose a match on purpose,” he said patiently, “without making it obvious. I didn’t know that everyone has to do it eventually.”

  My breath caught.

  “The money’s in the betting,” he continued. “And the odds were on me that night, by a fair bit.”

  “So people who bet against you had something to gain if you lost.”

  He nodded. “Old Helms—he ran the place—he told
me if I didn’t throw the match, I was out. I fought for him, he said, not to please myself. He knew I’d hate it, and I think he expected me to quit right then. But I wanted to stay.”

  “You didn’t want to go to work for your father.”

  “It’s not my father. It’s who he works for.”

  Tierney, I thought.

  He shifted his weight, keeping his hands in his pockets. “Once you get in his pocket, you don’t get out. So I planned to do what Helms asked—except it didn’t work.”

  “Why not?”

  “I was up against a bloke from Bethnal Green. Not a bad fighter, but I had at least two stone on him, and he was still green. After a while I dropped my guard a bit, acted tired, left myself open a few times so he landed a few.” Jack’s words came in a rush, as if he wanted to get them away from himself. By contrast, his body was motionless. “And then I threw a hook that I thought he could dodge. But he walked right into it and didn’t get up.”

  “What happened to you?”

  “Helms tossed me out, of course. Said I was worthless if I couldn’t follow the simplest bloody directions.” He pressed the toe of his boot absently in the dirt. “But the more I thought about it later, the more I wondered if it was an excuse. Helms liked me—and I’d earned him a fair bit. But there was something else at stake. Helms was afraid of something.”

  Suddenly I thought I understood. If Tierney wanted Jack to work for him, he passed the word to Helms and backed it with a threat. I shivered. “So you left boxing, and came to work for your father.”

  He nodded. “I never recruited the boys, or trained them, if that’s what you’re asking. But I’m in charge of keeping track of the nightly take, making sure it gets where it needs to go—pawnshops, the docks, the railways.” He hesitated. “Not that it means much, but the last year or so, I’ve been helping the boys when I can. I get them extra food, make sure they’ve got shoes and clothes and medicine if they get sick. My father doesn’t care, so long as I pay for it out of my own share.”

  His voice was low, and I heard in it the note of guilt that carried a plea for me to understand. But the image of the two boys dead on the pavement was fresh in my mind. I felt a wave of frustration and sadness and anger toward Jack that, together with my affection, made it so I could hardly breathe. We were silent for several minutes, until he broke it, his voice rough. “Nell, say something.”

  I took a deep, ragged breath, and what came out was half a wish and half a warning: “You can’t do this anymore, Jack.”

  Even in the slanted light, I could see his eyes dark with torment. “Don’t, Nell.”

  “Don’t?” I stared. “What do you mean, don’t? I can’t let you—you can’t believe what your father—what you and your father are doing is right—”

  “Damn it, Nell!” His voice was almost savage, his eyes searching mine. “Don’t ask me to betray my father. I can’t do it. I tell you, I won’t.”

  My mouth fell open. “But these boys are getting killed, doing what they’re doing! They need to be somewhere they’ll be treated decently—not forced into dangerous places like roofs and gutters and God knows where else!”

  “And where do you think they came from?” His expression was a mix of impatience and disgust. He shook his head and turned away from me, pacing about the yard in semicircles. “Most of these boys came out of the rookeries, Nell. Most of them were stealing before they got here—only they were starving and getting beat half to death, no matter what they brought back at the end of the day. And plenty of them were killed working that way, too, don’t think they weren’t. Rob and Gus had two older brothers. One of them worked for a ratcatcher, until he got bit and died. The other was strangled and thrown into the Thames for not handing over a shilling he found on the street. For keeping it in his pocket.”

  The lump in my throat made it hard to speak. “That’s . . . that’s horrible, Jack, I know. But that doesn’t mean they should be here. Why aren’t they somewhere safe—”

  “Like where? Workhouses? Orphanages? Do you know what they do to boys in those places?”

  I flinched at the sharpness in his voice. “At least they feed them—and—”

  “They hurt them, too. And sometimes they bugger them.” His eyes had gone black, and there was something queer and cold in his voice that told me this was something he knew, not from any sensational newspaper story, but in his bones.

  My mouth was dry. “When were you in an orphanage?”

  “After my mum died. My father was in prison for debt. They sent me to St. Lucien’s, near Seven Dials. The second night I was there, I was sleeping on a straw pallet with two other boys. We’d spent the whole day, twelve hours, refilling jars of shoe polish.” He stopped, and I waited, my breath shallow. “Sometime around midnight two men came and stood at the end of the bed. To this day, I don’t know why they didn’t take me. But they took those other two boys instead.”

  “Oh, dear God,” I whispered. Part of me wanted to ask him to stop.

  “There were rooms upstairs kept empty for it.”

  I felt bile rising into my throat. I put my palm over my mouth and swallowed hard.

  “The boys came back an hour later,” he continued. “Wouldn’t say a word to me. One was crying, but he had a gag around his mouth to keep him quiet. I had a knife hidden in my boot. It was dull, but good enough I could cut the knot.”

  “And you were ten.”

  “They were younger.” He was silent. “I left the next day, went back to my old street. That’s when Amalie’s family took me in.”

  “Jack, I had no idea.”

  “I know,” he said tiredly. “That’s why I’m telling you. Because you’ve got to understand—it may look like these boys are being badly used—and maybe they are. But they’re also getting two meals a day and someplace to sleep.”

  I tried once more. “The police are going to find out what happens here, you know. Sooner or later.”

  “Maybe.” He said it bitterly. “It just means the boys’ll go back out onto the street. My father’ll hang, and if I’m caught, I’ll be right there along with him.”

  I felt the roughness of the bricks under my hands. “Not if you get out and tell the police what you know.”

  He gave a short, horrible laugh. “He’s my father, Nell.”

  “I know,” I said between gritted teeth. “But I have to say it’s hard for me to believe. I’ve never met two people less like each other.”

  He studied me for a moment. “We’re more alike than you think.”

  I let him see the skepticism in my face. His eyes narrowed, and he shook his head. “Seems you think people are simple, like what you see of them over a few months is all they’ve ever been. But people change.”

  Stung, I drew myself up. “Of course people change. I’m not a fool. But if you want me to understand something different about your father, then you have to tell me. Because I’ve never seen a shred of compassion or kindness or generosity in him. Not even toward you.”

  “All right,” he said simply. “I’ll tell you.” He moved to lean against the wall next to me. “When my mother was dying, the doctor said she’d do better if she could sleep upright—so my father held her, every night, all night, against his chest. I remember how shiny and pale her face was because she’d sweat, even in her sleep. He’d hold a cloth over her mouth, so she could cough into it, and he’d wash out the blood in the morning.” He paused. “The doctor said my mother needed help digesting her food, and that her stomach could only tolerate fresh meat and bread. So my father would go out and buy the best he could find. He’d come home and cut it up tiny, stand at the stove and soak it in broth in this old, dented pot we had. Then he’d spoon it into her mouth, like she was a babe.” Finally, he looked at me. “She was sick for months, Nell. Sickness costs money. And time. My father lost his job at the docks for all the days he took off. Eventually, he went through all our savings. He sold everything we owned—our pictures, our silver, a ring his father had
given him.” Another pause. “Everything except her piano. He kept it. Do you know why?”

  I shook my head.

  “Because he knew that if she woke up and saw it gone, it would make her cry.”

  My tears came so fast that my eyes burned. In that moment, my heart ached for all of them.

  “Now do you understand?” he asked. “Never mind that he hates me sometimes. It’s because I remind him of her. But I’m all he has.”

  I couldn’t answer.

  Heavily, he pushed himself away from the wall, came round to face me, and said, “I know that what he’s doing is wrong.” His voice dropped until it was almost inaudible. “But I won’t turn him in, Nell. Not even for you.” His fingers brushed my damp cheek so lightly I might’ve imagined it.

  And then he was gone, back inside the music hall, and I was left alone in the darkness as the nighttime noises swelled and reverberated around me—theatergoers’ voices and laughter, the clop of horses’ hooves, the creak of wheels, the yowl of a lone cat.

  I tilted back my head to blink back the tears.

  A soft laugh came from somewhere off to my right. I whirled and strained my eyes to see who it was.

  Just as on the night I first met him, Stephen emerged from the shadows, his fair hair gleaming. He slid his hands into his pockets and raised an eyebrow. “That was quite a scene—though I wish I’d seen it from the start. I have a feeling I may have missed some touching dialogue.”

  “Not everything’s a bloody performance,” I said, chokingly.

  “Of course it is,” he said.

  My voice was taut. “No, it’s not. Although maybe the lines are blurrier for you.”

  That stopped him, and a look of surprise came over his face as he leaned against the wall next to me, in the same place Jack had been moments earlier. I could smell the whiskey on his breath.

  “What’s the matter with you?” he asked curiously.

  Careful, I thought to myself.

  “Nothing.” I made as if to leave, and he put out a hand.

  “No, wait. You’re going to tell me what you meant.” His voice was still pleasant, but his hand was firm. He wasn’t going to let me go until I told him something; I gave him what I thought was safe.