by Dilly Court
‘Priest indeed!’ Sarah folded her arms across her ample bosom. ‘I dunno how a good Church of England girl like me got herself hitched to a blooming papist.’ When no one ventured an explanation, she threw her hands up, rolling her eyes to heaven. ‘What has Father Brennan got to do with the price of fish, anyway?’
Giving Aldo’s clammy hand a squeeze, Ruby said nothing; it was almost impossible to pull the wool over her mother’s eyes but she knew there would be big trouble if Mum found out what had happened at the arches. They were relying on the money from Father Brennan; without it, there would be no food on the table or coal for the fire.
‘Well?’ Sarah said, arms akimbo. ‘I’m waiting. What have you two been up to?’
When Aldo did not offer an explanation, Ruby was forced to reply. ‘Nothing, Mum. Honest! It’s just that Father Brennan’s coming to collect baby Jesus.’
‘And?’
‘And he won’t be best pleased if he finds the door locked and no one there. I’d better get back to the arches.’
‘No, I got to go myself.’ Aldo got to his feet but doubled up, holding his belly. His face twisted with pain and beads of sweat broke out on his brow. ‘Maybe I go later.’
‘Maybe you go bed,’ Sarah said, and hitching his arm over her shoulder she guided him towards the staircase. Pausing to catch her breath, she turned on Rosetta who was sitting at the table sipping a cup of tea. ‘Ain’t you going back to Bronski’s?’
‘No,’ Rosetta said, with a defiant lift of her chin. ‘I ain’t never going back to that place, not for nothing. I done me last seam and snipped me last thread.’
Her knees bending beneath Aldo’s weight, Sarah took a deep breath, her face flushing to the colour of a boiled beetroot and her blue eyes popping from their sockets. ‘That’s what you think! I’ll have a few words to say to you, my girl, once I’ve got your dad to his bed.’
‘I can manage on me own,’ Aldo protested.
‘Save your breath, old man, you’re weak as a baby.’ Half lifting Aldo and half dragging him, Sarah stomped up the stairs, which creaked and groaned beneath their combined weight.
Rosetta grinned at Ruby. ‘I’m in for it now.’
‘Oh, Rose! What you been and gone and done?’
‘You know I hate this place,’ Rosetta said, twisting a strand of her glossy black hair around her finger. ‘I always told you I’d get out one day and now I got a chance and I’m taking it.’
Glancing anxiously at Granny Mole, who had nodded off now that the excitement was over, Ruby lowered her voice. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Got me a job in the chorus at the Falstaff Music Hall in Old Street. Don’t tell Mum.’
‘You never!’
‘I blooming well did. I weren’t never going to meet a rich bloke stuck in that filthy basement, choking on cotton fluff all day and ruining me eyes.’
‘Mum will kill you when she finds out.’
‘Well, she won’t, will she? Not unless you tells her. I got Aunt Lottie on my side. She’s the one what suggested I have a go.’
‘Shhh!’ Ruby put her finger to her lips. ‘You know what Mum and Granny think of Aunt Lottie.’
‘I don’t care. Lottie started in the chorus and she had rich admirers begging for her favours. Even the Prince of Wales, so she said.’
‘She drinks and she’s gambled all her money away. Joe told me so.’
‘Our big brother likes a flutter too, but I bet he never told you that. He thinks Lottie’s a good sport and so do I. Anyway, she says I got talent.’ Rosetta jumped to her feet, picking up her shawl and pulling a face. ‘Soaking! Lend us yours, Ruby, there’s a love.’
‘You’re going back to work?’
‘Not on your life! I’m not hanging around here just to get it in the neck. I’m going to Shoreditch to stay with Lottie. It’s nearer the theatre and she won’t give me earache going on and on all the time. Give us your shawl, please.’
‘No, sorry,’ Ruby said, snatching her shawl from the stool by the fire. ‘I got to go back to the arches, right now.’
Rosetta pulled her mouth down at the corners, pouting. ‘Aw, go on, Ruby. You’ll be there in two ticks. I got to walk all the way to Shoreditch and you wouldn’t want me to catch me death, now would you?’
Ruby hesitated; Rosetta had always been the one to fall sick with chest complaints ever since they were nippers and it was a long walk from Whitechapel to Shoreditch, especially on a bitter cold and wet day like today. Reluctantly, she swapped her almost dry grey shawl for Rosetta’s scarlet shawl that was damp and studded with melting hailstones. ‘What’ll I tell Mum?’
‘You’ll think of something. You was always the clever one.’ Wrapping the shawl around her head, Rosetta did a triumphant little dance, lifting her skirts to show a shapely leg even if it was clad in a thick and much-darned woollen stocking.
‘I ain’t going to lie,’ Ruby said, trying not to laugh at Rosetta’s antics.
Her smile fading, Rosetta clutched Ruby’s hand. ‘You will look after Poppa, won’t you? You’ll let me know if he gets any worse?’
‘Course I will, silly billy. And you won’t do nothing stupid, will you, Rose?’
‘As if I would!’ Rosetta’s irrepressible sense of fun bubbled into a wicked grin, banishing her fleeting look of concern. ‘You know me, Ruby.’
‘Only too well.’ Flinging her arms around Rosetta, Ruby hugged her. ‘Take care of yourself, Rose.’
The thump of the bedroom door closing and the heavy thud of Sarah’s feet on the stairs put a stop to their conversation and Rosetta was first out of the door, with Ruby hard on her heels. The sleet had turned into feathery flakes of snow, swirling down from the sky as if a giant feather pillow had burst above their heads. Rosetta was out of sight almost before Ruby had closed the door behind her. Putting her head down, she hurried back towards the arches, her feet slipping and sliding on the slushy cobblestones.
As she left the relative security of Tobacco Court for Spivey Street, a gust of warm air, laced with the stench of stale beer and tobacco smoke, oozed in a steamy cloud from the open door of the Nag’s Head. A man lurched out of the pub, staggered and slid on the snow, colliding with a lamp post and clinging to it for dear life as his feet shot from under him like a puppet with its strings cut. He looked so comical that Ruby had to cover her face with her shawl so that he wouldn’t see her laughing but, all the same, she hoped he hadn’t hurt himself too badly. She crossed the street to avoid walking past the disreputable row of boarded-up, four-storey houses that hadn’t seen a lick of paint since the day they were built some seventy years ago. Ragged, barefoot children hurled snowballs at each other, their thin faces wizened and pinched making them look like small gnomes, their screams and shrieks sounding more like feral animal snarls than human laughter. Ruby knew better than to interfere when they fell upon each other, snapping and snarling like wolf cubs. She quickened her pace, pulling her shawl down over her brow to shield her eyes from the snow. The east wind brought with it the stomach-churning stink of boiling bones from the glue factory, cancelling out the aroma of freshly baked bread from the bakehouse on the corner of Spivey Street. Ruby quickened her step and made her way down Cable Street to the arches. She half expected to find Father Brennan standing outside, dusted with snow and fuming with righteous anger having found the workshop closed, but mercifully there was no one waiting. Inside was barely warmer than outside and Ruby’s fingers were numbed and stiff with cold. The fire had gone out in the small brazier where Poppa melted the wax and kept it malleable enough to mould. She poked the cinders, hoping to resurrect enough heat to work with, but it was no use. Her hands were cold, the wax was even colder, and, examining the damage to the once perfect face, Ruby realised that it was beyond repair.
Sifting through a wooden crate of dolls’ heads, Ruby came across one that had been made for a baby doll but had been discarded by Poppa when it failed to meet his rigid standards. Father Brennan would be here at any
moment and Ruby was desperate. Gritting her teeth, she prayed forgiveness for desecrating a holy object as she cut off the original head and stuck on the new one, securing it with a thin collar of wax that she had softened by slipping it down the front of her blouse. The daylight was fading fast and Ruby lit a stub of a candle. She could hear the unmistakeable brisk tread of Father Brennan’s leather-soled boots slapping down on the pavement outside. The gate screamed on its rusty hinges and he stood in the doorway, his black outline absorbing the sliver of remaining light.
‘Well now, Ruby, my child. Have you something for me?’
Ruby’s hands were clammy with cold sweat; she swallowed hard and held the tiny figure out towards the priest. ‘Yes, Father.’
‘You know that this should have been ready a week ago. It’s really not good enough.’
‘No, Father.’
‘And where is Aldo?’
‘He’s sick, Father.’
‘You don’t mean he been on the drink, do you, my child?’
‘Oh no, Father. Poppa doesn’t take a drop. He couldn’t afford it even if he wanted to.’
Father Brennan tucked baby Jesus under his arm and reached beneath his robe, pulling out a leather purse. ‘You’ll want payment, although I daresay you would take it badly if I were to deduct money for late delivery.’
‘Yes, Father. I mean, no, Father. I’m sorry, Father.’
As he tugged at the purse strings with fat, mottled fingers that reminded Ruby of raw beef sausages, the purse flew from his grasp. With surprising agility, he swooped and caught it, but the sudden movement dislodged the improvised head of baby Jesus and sent it flying across the workshop floor. There was a moment of complete silence; even the rumbling of cartwheels and the clip-clop of horses’ hooves in the street outside seemed to stop, as Ruby and Father Brennan watched the severed head rolling in the dust.
Father Brennan recovered first with an almighty roar. ‘Sacrilege!’
Ruby scuttled across the floor to retrieve the head. ‘It was an accident, Father.’
Snatching it from her hand, Father Brennan held the head up to the light. ‘You wicked girl! This is a doll’s head. A shameful waxen travesty of a human infant!’
‘Please, Father, let me explain.’
Father Brennan strode towards the doorway. ‘I’ll be having words with your father.’
Ruby ran into the street after him. ‘No, please don’t. Poppa is very poorly. It was all my fault.’
Turning on her in a fury, Father Brennan seized her hand, folding her icy fingers around the doll’s head. ‘Dwell on your sins, Ruby, and when you have had time to contemplate your wicked deeds, you will come to confession.’
‘But, Father!’
‘And don’t expect to receive payment!’ Father Brennan strode off, disappearing into a flurry of snow.
Ruby stared after him with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that had nothing to do with the fact that she had forgotten to eat her slice of bread and dripping at dinnertime. She was not afraid of the penance that Father Brennan would hand out in the confessional, but she was afraid of telling Mum that one of Poppa’s strange outbursts of temper had been the cause of them losing money. Ruby shivered as the snowflakes settling on her thin cotton blouse began to melt, sending cold trickles down her neck. She hurried back inside the workshop, blew out the candle and wrapped Rosetta’s wet shawl around her head and shoulders, barely aware of the chill striking through her bones. She would have to think of some way to break the news so that it didn’t sound quite so bad; at least there was the money due from the wholesalers for the dolls. After all, they must sell well, it being so close to Christmas. There must still be plenty of well-off folks prepared to spend good money on their little daughters’ presents.
Ruby locked the gates and started for home. Hopefully her concern for Poppa would mellow Mum’s attitude to the unfortunate accident; after all, she wasn’t going to be upset that Father Brennan was put out. Mum had little or no time for popery in general and Father Brennan in particular, and neither had Granny Mole, who never passed up an opportunity to have a go at Catholics, Eyeties, Russians and Jews and in fact anybody whom she considered was a foreigner. Ruby sighed and wrapped her shawl more tightly around her head. Not only was she going to have to tell Mum that they weren’t going to be paid for the Christ Child, but also she would have to break the news that Rosetta had gone to stay with Aunt Lottie. Perhaps the bit about dancing in the chorus at the Falstaff could wait a while.
It was dark by the time Ruby reached Spivey Street, passing the lamplighter as he lit the last lamp, filling the dark canyon with oily pools of yellow light reflecting off the snow. Halfway down the road, a large snowball caught Ruby smack between her shoulder blades and another hit her square in the face, half blinding her. Surrounded by a crowd of jeering boys, no more than six or seven years of age, Ruby blinked the snow out of her eyes, holding her arm in front of her face as she was bombarded by a further hail of snowballs. One of the urchins tugged at her shawl, tweaking it from her shoulders, and was about to make off with it when someone lifted him clear off his feet, holding him by the scruff of his neck and shaking him so that his skinny legs swung, kicking in mid-air.
‘No you don’t, sonny!’
Blurrily, Ruby saw her tormentors scatter in all directions as Billy dropped the culprit onto a pile of slush.
‘Let’s get you home afore you catches your death of cold,’ Billy said, retrieving her shawl from the wet ground. He handed it to her, staring hard. ‘Red shawl. I was hoping I might bump into Rosetta, but it’s Ruby, ain’t it?’
‘Same difference,’ Ruby said, wiping the snow from her face and drawing herself up to her full height. ‘Anyway, it’s okay, ta. I can get meself home. They caught me unawares but they won’t get away with it a second time.’
‘You’re the stubborn one, you are, Ruby,’ Billy said, clicking his tongue to bring his old horse ambling forward with the cart and, without a by your leave, he hoisted Ruby onto the driver’s seat. ‘Wrap that around you.’ Billy tossed her a hessian sack from beneath a pile of tea chests.
It smelt awful but at least it was dry and Ruby huddled beneath it as Billy led the horse down Spivey Street towards Tobacco Court. Normally she would have leapt back down again, thanked him politely and gone on her way, but Ruby was wet, cold and too worried about what she was going to say to Mum to act proud and independent. Thankfully, Billy didn’t seem to want to chat or ask questions and, when they neared Tobacco Court, she called out to him to stop. ‘I can walk the rest, ta.’
Billy grinned at her beneath his peaked cap. ‘Afraid the neighbours might talk, ducks?’
‘No, I was just saving you the trouble, that’s all.’
‘Don’t worry. They all know as how you wouldn’t give the likes of me the time of day. Now your sister Rosetta, well, she’s different.’
‘And what do you mean by that?’
‘She’s a bobby-dazzler. Nothing wrong with that, is there?’
‘You keep your eyes off me sister. You keep away from her.’
‘Whoa, there,’ Billy said, pulling gently on the reins until the horse clopped to a halt outside number sixteen. ‘Strikes me that your sister has a mind of her own.’
‘Rosetta is a good girl. You got a bad reputation, Billy. Leave her alone.’
‘That’s right,’ Billy said, grinning. ‘I’m a bad lot.’
Ruby jumped off the cart. ‘I ain’t joking. You steer clear of Rosetta.’
‘Maybe I will and maybe I won’t.’ Billy leapt down from the driver’s seat and patted the horse’s neck. ‘You done well, old boy. We’ll be home soon.’ He went to the back of the cart and hoisted a familiar-looking tea chest onto his shoulder, dumping it on the pavement. ‘Couldn’t sell your dolls, ducks. Hope you wasn’t relying on the bees and honey.’
Ruby’s heart sank into her high-button boots but she held her head proudly erect; she wasn’t going to give Billy the satisfaction of knowing
just how much it mattered. ‘How do I know you took them to the wholesalers?’
‘I don’t cheat on friends, Ruby. I took them all right, but they didn’t want ’em. Said it was too late, the shops had bought their Christmas stock and didn’t want no more. Hard luck, girl.’
‘Hard luck?’ Ruby stared at him aghast. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘Eh?’ Pushing his cap to the back of his head, Billy stared at her. ‘What’s up?’
‘Take them away, please, Billy. I can’t explain now, but just keep them for us until I can think of a way out of this mess.’
Chapter Two
By the time she reached Aunt Lottie’s house in Shoreditch, Rosetta was soaked to the skin and she couldn’t feel her fingers or toes. She had no clear idea of the distance between Tobacco Court and Raven Street, but it must be three miles or maybe four, if her aching legs were anything to go by. Stopping on the corner for a moment to catch her breath, Rosetta rubbed her hands together and stamped her feet in an effort to bring them back to life. Raven Street, she thought, was a step up from the rookeries in Whitechapel but it had definitely seen better days. The terrace of red-brick, five-storey town houses had been built at the beginning of the century to house wealthy merchants, lawyers and City bankers and their servants. Now, almost a hundred years on, the rich families were long gone and their large homes had been turned into cheap boarding houses, illicit gaming hells and brothels. Aunt Lottie’s house was slap bang in the middle and its crumbling exterior was equal to anything in the Gothic horror stories that Rosetta loved to read. Hugging Ruby’s sodden shawl a bit tighter around her shoulders she walked on, slipping on the slushy pavements and making a grab for the rusting iron railings outside the house as she climbed the stone steps up to the front door.
Lifting her hand to rap on the knocker, she took a step backwards as the door opened and a man pushed past her, his shoulders hunched beneath his green-tinged black suit and his face hidden by a battered top hat pulled down over his ears.