‘Are you off to the mission today, Ettie?’ I asked, giving the guvnor time to settle himself.
She nodded, pushing a finger under her scarf to give her neck a bit of a scratch. Ettie spent half the week working for a mission that visited the slums and provided refuge to young women who’d been forced to work the streets by their menfolk. They had a campaign against the three most notorious slum landlords too, the ones who supplied only a couple of privvies for three hundred or more people and were happy to let open sewers run through the middle of their courts. Thomas Orme Smith, Samuel Chance and Dr Bruce Kennard were they, with Orme Smith owning the worst slum of all, a dark and diseased warren named Cutlers Court. The mission sent letters to the papers and held vigils outside their houses, embarrassing them before their neighbours. It caused a lot of bad feeling, and there were many in London hated that mission and the women associated with it.
‘We’ve two new girls in,’ she said, sitting forward. As the guvnor reached for the laudanum again, she snatched it from the table. ‘Last night we had bricks through the refuge windows again. Some people in this city are unforgiveable, Norman. As if those women haven’t had it hard enough already.’
Her eyes were bitter and it made me sorry. It was my city, from my first breath through all the good and bad things that ever happened to me. London was part of me, and I felt shame for what it could do to people
She breathed in deep and made herself smile.
‘You know I’ve known you for over six months and never met your wife, Norman? We thought you might visit over Christmas.’
‘She’s been away,’ I said, feeling my voice change.
‘Where?’
‘It’s been…’ I started to say, but then a terrible weariness came over me and I couldn’t go on. I’d lived with the secret for so long it felt like the truth was frozen inside.
I shook my head, realizing that it wouldn’t be my decision in the end. Ettie was looking at me like she could see something of my thoughts. I turned my eyes back to the cold, grey ash in the hearth. The wind rattled the windows.
‘Did you manage to see Birdie yesterday?’ she asked after a while.
As I told her what had happened, the guvnor’s shakes began to ease and the colour came back to his face. He drank from a jug of water at his side. Again and again his cheeks inflated with a parade of silent burps.
‘It doesn’t sound as if you know any more than the Barclays told you,’ she said when I’d finished.
‘Of course we do,’ growled the guvnor. ‘Every step takes us nearer. That’s how these cases work.’
‘Does that apply to our builders, William?’ asked Ettie, suddenly vexed. ‘Are we nearer getting our rooms back each day they do no work?’
‘They’ve promised they’ll be back this time.’
‘We can’t impose on Lewis much longer. Please, William. It’s not fair.’
‘I’m doing my best!’
‘They’re playing you for a fool. Why don’t you take Norman to see them?’
‘No, Ettie!’ cried the guvnor.
‘Will you talk to them, Norman?’
‘If you want,’ I said, my voice hollow.
She heard my tone and her face fell.
‘I didn’t mean—’
‘I’m happy to do it, Ettie.’
I looked away. Whenever I started to feel easy, one of them’d remind me how they really saw me. I was his rough. What else could I be with these worn-out boots, this voice thick with the Bermondsey slums? Though I only lived in that foul court for six years, it seemed I’d never escape it.
‘Norman, I’m sorry,’ she said, her face as serious as I’d ever seen it. ‘I shouldn’t have asked.’
‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘Really.’
She looked at me for a while, not knowing how to fix it, then went off to make some tea. The guvnor rested his head on the antimacassar and shut his eyes, working at healing himself.
Soon Ettie came back with the tray. I took a biscuit: the guvnor took four.
‘She’s asking for our help,’ he said when he’d refreshed himself. His face was sombre. ‘I’m sure of it. It kept me awake last night, seeing her up there, that picture, wondering what it means.’
‘But she didn’t actually speak?’ asked Ettie.
‘No, but I felt her sadness so clearly. Her fear. Norman felt the same when he saw her on the train. Sometimes all we have to work with are our feelings.’
‘Our feelings can lead us in the wrong direction, William, as well you know.’
‘Remember that book I was reading on crowd behaviour?’ He peered down at the pile of books by his chair and pulled out a green volume to show us. ‘Le Bon writes that emotions are contagious. I can’t say I properly understand how it works, and I’m not sure he does either, but there’s no doubt that emotions can be transmitted from one heart to another if we attend with care. Music can do it, can’t it?’
‘I suppose,’ said Ettie slowly.
A screaming started up in the road just outside the house, a child. The guvnor flinched, clutching his head. Then a woman’s scolding voice, then a man’s gruff roar joined in. They fought on and on as Lewis’s three clocks, each out of time with the others, ticked on the mantel.
‘We need to get to her, damn it!’ he cried suddenly, his fist banging down on the side table. ‘She couldn’t be more vulnerable! And that scar on her head might just be the start of a terrible journey. We have to think of something, Norman.’
‘Why don’t I go up there and try?’ asked Ettie. ‘They might react differently to a woman.’
‘No, Sister.’
‘But why not? The Ockwells aren’t going to let you in, that much is clear. The Barclays have tried the police and they won’t help. You’ve no other way to get to her.’
‘This is our work, Ettie. Walter has a history of violence. I don’t want you up there on your own. Anyway, why would you have more success than us?’
‘Women can sometimes do things that men cannot,’ she said, her chest rising in indignation. ‘What other choice have you, William? She’s asking for help. You said it yourself.’
He gazed vacantly at his sister across the room, pondering. His stomach groaned like a lonely cow. Finally he turned to me.
‘Remember those two labourers we saw the other day in the farmyard? The ones chased by the dog? Let’s see if we can find them in the fields. They might be able to tell us something. But first run down to the shop and get us a kidney pudding, will you, Barnett? And a dozen oysters.’
We happened to find a butcher’s cart on its way to the Ockwell farm as we set out from the station that afternoon. He dropped us in the dip before the lane rose to the farm entrance, out of sight of the house, and there we pushed through a hedgerow. The field to our right was full of pigs, their heads bent, guzzling a scatter of turnips on the ground. The ground was frozen hard.
We followed a path between a small woodland and a paddock, where a couple of sulky horses stood, their bodies wrapped in coal sacks. They glanced at us with a hungry look in their eyes but didn’t come over. That suited me fine: I never believed a horse was a man’s friend like some folk said. A