Park Lane

by Frances Osborne

  The houses are nearly all stone, but let darken to grey and brown. You’d’ve thought they’ve the money to clean them, the people who live here. But it seems the richer you are, the older your things look. The windows, too, look funny, all different, they are. Some have deep bays jutting out as if they’re desperate for more space but if they wanted the rooms bigger, thinks Grace, why didn’t they build square out to the front like Number Thirty-Five. It hasn’t got the prettiest windows, though. Proud as she is, Grace is still honest about that. If she were to choose, she’d take windows with a triangle hat, but no raised stone borders down the side. That’s too much of a frill for her. Number Thirty-Five Park Lane does have grooves, pointed-edge dips between the blocks of stone for giant fingers to run through, but she doesn’t mind them there.

  The shutters on one of the houses are closed like nobody ever goes there. At dinner the other day the upper servants were talking about houses not visited for years at a time. Still get dusty, though. The furniture is covered in great white sheets and sits around the rooms like ghost beasts. ‘That’s what happened here,’ James told her, ‘when they all suddenly disappeared to Lady Masters’ family’s house in America for a year. Had to, they did, after Sir William Masters’ gambling the house away and Lady Masters having to buy it back – for herself. She wasn’t going to let him gamble it away again. And what with Sir William’s dancing girl, and all that he’d given her, not to mention being so open about it and everyone knowing, well, the whole family needed to take themselves out of society for a bit. That’s what people like the Masters do. If they stayed away for a year, everyone would be talking about something else by the time they returned. And so that’s how it was – Number Thirty-Five full of life one week, with not a murmur of anything different, then like the grave the next.’

  Am-er-ic-a, thinks Grace, savouring each syllable. Stories she’s heard, that you can go from any street here and do well for yourself in America. Not a question of anyone being bothered about where you’ve come from, and a maid only being a maid; over there, they care more about what you can do. And the country stretches further than you can imagine, she’s heard. Maybe she and Michael should go to America, and send back money from there. Go to America, though, and they might never see Ma, Da and the little ones, again. Not that she knows when she’ll get herself back to Carlisle.

  By the time Grace reaches the top of Park Lane she’s becoming used to the noise and the road being so full of buses and motors, horses and carts picking their way between them. But it still feels as though all that engine dirt is layering itself on her. It’s a funny thing, that the smartest place to live has so much of it. When she first arrived in the city she would have preferred a quiet street. She’s not so sure now, the busy-ness makes her feel less lonely. And you get used to a bit of green all too quick.

  At this end of Park Lane the houses are smaller, tall, thin and jammed together in a row of white plaster. Still, they’re mansions themselves. On the other side of the road, in the top corner of the park, she sees a handful of men standing up on crates. Some even have crowds around them, so you can’t see the crates and they just look like giants. She’s at the end now, at Marble Arch, with steps down into the ground, and the Tube underneath.

  She feared it’d be crowded. Grace has heard about the early mornings and late afternoons. Don’t travel on it then, she was told in the boarding house, or you’ll find yourself jammed in, breathing shoulderfuls of damp tweed. Then you feel the hands around your rear, though one girl claimed to have had hands around the front. But they don’t dare touch your chest. You might see who it is, though there’s not much you could do about it: you can’t move, can’t move an inch. Swivel your head and you’ll lose an eye to the rim of a short man’s bowler. So eyes forward and try to keep your mind off the fact that one of the men near you, his body squeezed against yours, is touching you there. The girls who aren’t used to it go bright red. Take the omnibus, it may be slower, but it’s safer, costs less, too. Grace took the omnibus when she was out searching for work up the city, down the city, right across London. Her world is much smaller now, she can walk to church, to the park. Today, though, she needs to be quick. She walks up to the ticket booth, hands over tuppence and in a minute she’s underneath the city and in spitting distance, she must be, of all that rot that sinks down here. She can smell it, she’s sure of it, for the same people built the Underground as built the sewers, including the first Mr Masters, Miss Beatrice’s great-grandad. Funny to know so much about him, but then you can’t miss it, not in that room at the back.

  There’s no air down here. How can there be? Yet she’s still breathing, and that’s not natural, is it? Nor is the speed at which the train is going along. She’s counting the stops but she can’t see much from the middle of this crowd, and who’s to tell if they’ve been right through one she didn’t see at all. What if she went to the end of the line and there wasn’t a way out from there. But here it is, Chancery Lane, just like Michael said. The paper’s in her pocket but she can remember his voice: ‘Just at the bottom of Chancery Lane and in through one of the gateways. Then ask for this address. If you ever need me, that’s where I am.’

  Back outside it’s drizzling a little; however, it’s daylight again and any daylight will do but, my word, Chancery Hill they should call it, and she’s at the top of it. Even the horses are leaning back as their hooves tilt forwards and the pavement’s not much more than a couple of feet wide so you’re knocked into the traffic. She has to hurry, even though her boots are skidding this way and that. It’s a quarter to one and surely they’ll send him out not much later. She makes her steps small, pushing down heavily to keep steady.

  It’s a passage, Michael said, at the bottom, through an arch, and Grace is looking. One looms on her left. Middle Temple Lane. Middle, was that it? No, no, that’s not it. And she walks along. Outer Temple Lane, that’s the next, yes, that was it, Outer. She walks down the high-walled alley barely wide enough for a wheelbarrow, wondering where her brother does work, whether it’s a good place, after all those questions he had for her. But it doesn’t smell, she’ll give him that; and it’s deathly quiet. Grace pauses, balancing on the cobbles, and closes her eyes. You want to drink it in, this sound, or not-sound, keep it in your head for when you’re trying to sleep.

  It’s the ring of footsteps that opens her eyes. A pair of men dressed in wigs and with cloaks floating behind them are coming up the lane towards her like a pair of ghosts. Grace wonders what world it is that she has stepped into but on she goes, down another slope, through the archway at the end and into a silent square. She’s the only one in it, brick blocks with white-painted window frames rising around her, lists of names beside the doorways. A motor squeezes down a lane on the far side of the square. Grace walks towards it. Where there’s a way to drive there’s a way to walk. There’ll be someone to ask.

  She stops at the edge of the road and looks down the hill. She can see the Thames at the bottom, cold and grey. Is that what London is, she asks herself? Is that what it will feel like if I am caught?

  An errand boy is running towards her, about to pass quicker than a word, but he smiles at her as he trots, and she calls to him, Hare Court? Through the archway. What archway? Thissun here. And he tilts his head towards a building on the other side of the road.

  Through she goes, looking this way and that, but it’s not Hare Court here and she waits at the far end for another boy to pass for they’re tearing up and down these alleys like it’s nobody’s business. One boy and two turns more, and she’s there.

  It is dark, this building. The brick is dirtier than she’s seen before, and there’s a brown brick wall right opposite the door. Just inside the doorway is a young man, about Michael’s age, arms full of paper tied with pink ribbon. Grace shrinks back. She’ll stand by the wall, melt into it.

  Grace keeps her eyes on her feet, glancing up at each echo of steps on cobbles, and down again. She doesn’t want to be seen as starin
g. It’s raining in any case, and her bonnet tilted forward is keeping the drops off her face. It’ll be a mess, though, the bonnet; she should have brought an umbrella, but she didn’t think, and now the tips of her boots are darkening in the wet.

  And there he is, in his mackintosh, head forward. He doesn’t see her, passes right by. Michael, she calls, and he jolts round.

  ‘What are you doing here? What’s wrong?’ He looks worried.

  ‘Nothing’s wrong.’

  Why should something be wrong? Does he think that’s the only reason she’d come to see him? ‘I’ve something for you.’

  ‘Couldn’t it wait till Sunday?’ He begins to walk again and she falls in with him.

  Rude, she thinks, and from her own brother, but she’ll not let him push her away like that.

  Doesn’t he realise the trouble she’s gone to?

  ‘No, it couldn’t, Michael.’

  ‘Show me then, Grace. Quick.’

  ‘No, Michael, not here, round the corner.’

  ‘I’ve no time for that. I’m starving hungry, Grace. You’ll have to walk with me.’

  He’s off and Grace is near trotting to keep up. She doesn’t want to show him here, there are too many people, what if someone should see, though she can’t think who. The bag is swinging side to side as she goes and she reaches in, grasps it and pulls, but the book is catching on the opening at the top. It’s out now, she’s handed it to him. He stops dead. Then he turns it over with such a strange expression on his face that Grace can’t tell whether he’s excited or disgusted, and this pricks her. She feels her skin drawing back across her face and she’s having to fight more than little to go on looking so tender towards him.

  ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘The library.’

  ‘In the office?’

  ‘No, in the house. We all live in the house, remember.’

  ‘They lent it to you?’ He turns it over in his hands and opens the first couple of pages, looking right over them. ‘Grace, do you know what it’s worth?’

  He’s telling her off. My Lord, all she’s done, and he’s telling her off. She’s a mind to let him know … but she can’t, can she? She can’t say anything at all, and she’s no idea what it’s worth in money. To her it is worth her position and her ability to send money home.

  ‘Don’t you want to read it, Michael?’ She can hear the anger in her own voice.

  ‘Grace, it’s signed by the man who wrote it. Did they know you were taking it out of the house? Why do you think they’d want you to read this?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I read it, Michael? You weren’t the only one to have lessons with Miss Sand, remember. And it’s hardly a locked-up sort of book.’

  ‘What’s a locked-up sort of book?’

  Grace blushes. Michael’s eyes open wide, stare at her.

  ‘What sort of family have you become involved with, Grace?’

  What sort of family? They’re a darn sight better than those he’s working for, she’s sure of that. She blurts out a bit too quick: ‘Just talk, Michael.’

  ‘Not talk you should be having, a girl like you. Did he ask you for anything?’

  ‘No, Michael. It’s not like that there.’

  He turns the book over in his hands. ‘You must be doing well, Grace. I’ll wager he doesn’t do this for his housemaids.’

  On the corner of Chancery Lane and Fleet Street, Grace sees a shop window with barely a dozen books laid out. They’re all sizes, one she could fit into the palm of her hand, another is the size of the Bible in church on Sunday, and this one is open, stretched wide. Grace looks at it through the glass; there are pictures in it, and thick, foreign writing. She thinks she can see a word or two she knows, but the rest, well, it’s not English, not that she’s seen. There’s a book, too, which looks like the one she’s given Michael. A thin binding, and leather, not so old, type like it should be. She doesn’t want to know but she wants to find out, can’t go past now without asking, even if it will make the worry worse. Now Michael’s put the worry there, she can’t get it out of her mind.

  Grace hasn’t much time left but she rings the bell. The door opens and the man in front of her is wearing a black jacket, with waistcoat and pinstripe trousers and seems too modern for the books, though he’s losing his hair, most of it gone. He looks her up and down as though to say the cheek of it, to be coming into his shop.

  ‘I’d like to enquire about a price,’ she says in her best Park Lane posh, and, his eyebrows raised, the man lets her in.

  Which? he asks. The one in the window, she replies. Across they go and Grace peers over the back of the display. She points.

  ‘Just six pounds, madam.’

  Just six pounds? It’s half of what she earns in a year. She turns and goes so quickly that she’s almost stumbling out of the door.

  Still, Grace sleeps better that night, and Saturday too. She hasn’t much fear that anybody will look for the book in the library, she’s never seen any of upstairs go in. It’s more the fear that somebody might find it on her. When she’s not touching the book, it’s not touching her. So when Michael gives it back to her on Sunday, and she feels the weight of it in her hands, the worry comes on her again.

  ‘I’ve read it,’ he says. ‘Thank you.’

  He’s looking down at his feet as he hands it to her. Why, he’s as sheepish as they come, but it’s a thank you, and it’s meant and it fills her up a little, makes her feel better about what she’s done to get it.

  ‘You’d better read it now, Grace.’

  ‘Why, Michael’ – she begins to say, but now he’s looking at her like she’s the riddle of the Sphinx – ‘do you think I didn’t read it already?’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Just teasing, Michael.’

  ‘Better remember why Mr Townsend gave it to you, Grace. It wasn’t to lend to me. He’ll ask you what’s in it.’

  Mr Townsend, who’s he, Grace is about to ask? Then she remembers it’s the name of her employer that she gave to Michael.

  ‘I’ve no time now, Michael.’ She’s quick today, and speaking straight ahead as though she’s too grand to look at him. ‘You’ve had it all week. You’ll have to tell me what’s in it. And, Michael?’

  ‘Yes, Grace.’

  ‘Don’t speak to me as though I am a child.’

  Now she turns, to be honest, to gloat a little, see him taken aback. But he’s not listening. He’s looking at her and the book is pouring out of his mouth, his words full of anger with the world. It’s as if she’s suddenly turned on a stiff hot-water tap that will never go back. She stares at her brother, dead proud of the way he can talk, and dead nervous as to where it will take him.

  In the library the next morning Grace looks up, searches for the gap on the shelves to put the book back into, but the books appear to have expanded, filled it out. Or was that how she had arranged them? The steps are on the far side of the room and Grace remembers the rattle and the grind of moving them and the attention it might bring. Then she looks back up at the shelves and wonders if it would ever be noticed if she didn’t put the book back. And when, after breakfast, she is cleaning the telephone booth on the ground floor around the back of the main stairs, she sees a directory on the shelf. Shutting herself in, small duster in hand as though she is scraping out the last grey grains, Grace opens the pages. If nobody’s read the book she took for years, who’s going to read it now, or ever again?

  After dinner, for there’s nobody for luncheon today, Grace heads south-east, her handbag over her arm. Hyde Park Corner; she’d like to walk through the arch some day. She hasn’t time now as she doesn’t know how long she will be. Perhaps on the way back. If she’s quick enough maybe she’ll have a chance to talk to Joseph too.

  It’s him that’s turning away now. He looks at her like she’s stuck a knife in his stomach and shows her his back, even when they’re cleaning the silver together. She should be relieved, shouldn’t she? But the silence is ringing in her
ears and she just needs to explain to him, tell him how she doesn’t want to give him ideas, seeing as she has plans of her own, and she’s taken by her obligations. But she can’t get close. And the house, it feels hollow now without his smile. But that hollowness makes it seem not so bad, what she’s about to do.

  Grace walks through Belgrave Square and its shiny black doors in tall white stucco, only dusty around the windows. Even the houses with three windows across, and large ones at that, look almost cramped compared to Park Lane. But how could she think that?

  It’s strange how quickly your perspective can change.

  Elizabeth Street is narrow and pretty. The white is broken up by shopfront windows pushing out from the houses in blues, greens and browns. Grace finds the shop she is looking for halfway down on the right. The books in the window look more like the one she is carrying under her coat than those back on Fleet Street. A small man answers the door, a smile on his face she can’t read. She follows him inside, where she draws the book out of her handbag and places it on the counter. He picks it up and opens it. His eyebrows flicker as he sees the signature.

  Grace has no idea whether his offer is enough, but it’s enough for her. Besides, if he’s as good as stolen from her then he’s not going to say anything, is he?

  She leaves with five pounds in her pocket.