A Mother's Wish (7 page)

Effie had quite forgotten that it was Saturday and by now most people would have finished work and be ready for a night out, a fact that became clearer as she reached the packed fairground. On the outskirts, the gypsy caravans were grouped in a circle with the horses tethered safely inside. Camp fires sent plumes of smoke spiralling up into the sky and barefoot children with sun-tanned skins played with mongrel dogs. Goats were tethered a little way from the encampment together with the odd cow accompanied by its calf. Georgie had been moaning quietly but now his tiredness was apparently forgotten as he plugged his thumb in his mouth and stared in fascination at the lively gypsy children. Effie led him quickly onwards as they entered a wide expanse of common land filled with tents and stalls, noise and colour. Men on stilts wandered between the crowds towering above everyone on their ridiculously long legs, while musicians played fiddles and drums, competing with the steam organ on the merry-go-round and the lively tunes of the hurdy-gurdy man.

Effie wandered from stall to stall, asking the
traders if they had seen Tom or if they knew Toby Tapper. Although most of them seemed to know Toby, no one had news of Tom. After an hour of fruitless questioning, Effie was feeling exhausted and dispirited. With Georgie riding piggyback once again, her shoulders were aching and her feet were undoubtedly blistered and extremely sore. She was hot, thirsty and very close to tears. It was early evening and although it was still light, naphtha flares were blazing on the stalls adding to the intense heat which seemed to rise from the baked earth and crushed grass. Tiredness combined with anxiety and pent-up emotions threatened to swamp her and she stumbled, almost losing her footing.

‘Oy, look out there. Knock me stall over and you’ll have to pay for breakages.’ The harsh voice of a raw-boned woman standing behind a stall piled high with fairings acted like a slap in the face, bringing Effie sharply back to her senses. She steadied herself by clutching at the wooden table, and the crudely made ornaments jiggled together.

‘I said be careful.’ The woman strode round to the front of the stall, but she came to a halt as Georgie began to wail. ‘Goodness gracious, what d’you think you’re doing dragging that baby round a place like this? Ain’t you got a home to go to?’

Effie shook her head. ‘No.’

The woman took a step backwards, staring at them with a frown wrinkling her weather-beaten brow. She folded her arms across her chest, angling her head. ‘A runaway, are you?’

‘No, I’m not,’ Effie said angrily. It was too close to the truth to ignore and she resented being judged and criticised by a complete stranger. ‘I’m looking for my brother and a man called Toby Tanner.’

The woman threw back her head and laughed as she chucked Georgie under the chin. ‘That’s his brat, I suppose. Come to beg him to marry you, I suppose.’

‘Certainly not.’ Effie slid Georgie off her back and cradled him in her arms. ‘It’s not like that. Toby is a friend and my brother went looking for him. Tom is just a boy and I haven’t seen him for weeks.’ To Effie’s chagrin her voice broke on a sob. ‘I’ll not bother you any longer.’ She began to walk away but the woman called her back.

‘Here, you. Come back.’

Effie paused. ‘What do you want? Have you remembered something?’

The woman held out her hand and Effie noticed that it was unusually large for a woman, sinewy and strong, as if she had spent a lifetime doing manual labour. ‘They call me Leah.’

It seemed churlish to ignore this friendly overture and Effie found her hand clasped in a firm hold. ‘Effie,’ she murmured. ‘I’m Effie Grey and this is my son, Georgie. My husband died . . .’ She could not continue without breaking down completely.

Leah released Effie’s hand and held her arms out to take Georgie, who had stopped crying and was eyeing her curiously. ‘He’s a fine fellow. I had one just like him, but my Eddie was taken from me afore he reached his second birthday.’ She lifted Georgie from his mother’s arms, holding him high above her head and laughing at his delighted chuckles. ‘My Eddie used to love being swung about. Nothing frightened my Eddie.’

Effie watched anxiously. ‘We’d best be on our way.’

‘You look exhausted,’ Leah observed, settling Georgie on her hip. ‘How long have you been on the road looking for this brother of yours?’

‘Not long,’ Effie said truthfully. ‘But I must go now. I need to find somewhere to sleep tonight.’ She saw suspicion in Leah’s dark eyes and this brought her chin up. ‘I have money and I can pay for a night’s lodging.’

Leah shrugged her broad shoulders. ‘Keep your cash, Effie Grey. I’ve got a wagon of me own and a pot on the fire. You’re welcome to
share my supper and kip down for the night, if you don’t mind the small space. Or you can sleep outside under the stars, which I often do on a night like this.’

‘Oh, really. I couldn’t put you to so much trouble.’

But Leah did not seem to be listening. ‘Oy, Myrtle.’ She beckoned to a woman selling toffee apples from a tray slung about her neck on a leather strap. ‘Watch me stall for a moment.’

Myrtle took the clay pipe from her mouth and nodded, catching the purse which Leah tossed to her.

Effie was about to protest but Leah was already on the move with Georgie tucked beneath her arm like a bundle of washing. She disappeared between a tent advertising the charms of the bearded lady and another boasting of the largest rat in captivity. Effie felt panic rise in her throat to choke her as wild thoughts flashed through her mind. She had heard about gypsies and fairground folk kidnapping young children. She broke into a run . . .

PUSHING HER WAY
through the crowd, Effie stumbled over grassy tussocks and narrowly missed getting her foot caught in the guy ropes of a large tent where, judging by the thunderous applause and appreciative shouts and whistles, some kind of entertainment seemed to be in progress. Panic gripped her as she lost sight of Georgie, and she wanted to scream and shout at the smiling faces of families out for a pleasant Saturday evening at the fair. What right had they to be so cheerful when her child might have been abducted by a strange woman? Effie skidded to a halt as she came to the end of the attractions, reaching the place where the fairground people had set up their encampment. She was just in time to see Leah set Georgie down on the bottom step of a brightly painted caravan. He was smiling happily as he licked a toffee apple.

Leah turned to her with a nod of approval. ‘He’s a fine boy. Took to me right away he did.’

Effie controlled her erratic breathing with
difficulty. She did not want to make a scene, and she realised that she was receiving curious looks from some of the women who were nursing babies or simply sitting on the steps of their wagons. With her panic subsiding and commonsense reasserting itself, Effie moved closer to Georgie. She did not know whether to snatch him up and make a run for it, or to brazen it out with this bold and slightly mannish female.

Leah, however, seemed totally oblivious to the storm of unrest she had wrought in Effie’s bosom and she was casually stirring something in a black cast-iron pot suspended over the fire on a tripod constructed from forked branches. She looked up and grinned. ‘Fetch a couple of bowls from the van and we’ll eat now. Zilla will eat later.’

‘Zilla?’ Effie stared at Leah in surprise. She had assumed that this rather odd person lived alone, but it appeared that she had been wrong.

‘My pal Zilla, the bearded lady. You’ll meet her in a while. Now, are you going to join me for supper or not?’

The thought of meeting a woman with a beard who went by the name of Zilla was so intriguing that Effie momentarily forgot her reservations and climbed the steps into the caravan, taking care not to tread on Georgie.
Used as she was to living in the cramped conditions on a barge, the interior of the caravan seemed little different. It was, she thought, as she searched for the bowls, much better organised than the cabin on the
Margaret
and it was spotlessly clean. The paintwork was as colourful inside as it was on the exterior, and there did not seem to be a nook or a cranny that was not brightened either with plump cushions, polished brasses or china ornaments, some of which Effie recognised from the fairings stall. It was, to her surprise, a most welcoming home: comfortable, cosy and unashamedly feminine. She hurried out with the bowls that she had found on the shelf of a wooden dresser.

The soup might not have been quite up to the standard of Betty’s rabbit stew, but it was flavoured with wild herbs and tasted very good: Effie consumed two bowlfuls with no difficulty, sharing the first with Georgie, after which he fell asleep on her lap replete and smiling, with remnants of toffee stuck to his face. Leah sat cross-legged on the ground smoking a pipe, but she tossed it aside and scrambled to her feet when a large woman squeezed her wide crinoline between two caravans, swaying towards them like a giant bell. As she came closer, Effie realised that this could be none other than Zilla, the
bearded lady. Much to Effie’s astonishment, Leah greeted her friend with a smacking kiss on the lips, and, hooking an arm around Zilla’s ample shoulders, she proudly introduced her. ‘This here is my pal, Zilla. We’ve been together for more than twenty years, ain’t that so, my dear?’

Zilla smiled and nodded, although the gesture was rather lost in the mass of grey beard that began at her hairline and tumbled in waves onto her large bosom. ‘Pleased to make your acquaintance, young woman.’

Hampered by Georgie’s weight, Effie was unable to rise but she nodded her head. ‘Likewise, I’m sure.’

‘This is Effie,’ Leah said with an expansive wave of her hand. ‘And the fine young fellow asleep on his ma’s lap is Georgie. Don’t he remind you a bit of my Eddie?’

Zilla’s green eyes filled with tears and she wiped her face on her beard. ‘Poor little mite. I knew him for such a short while, but he were an angel straight from heaven.’

‘And that’s where he is now,’ Leah said, raising her eyes to the darkening sky. ‘I like to think of my boy as a star, gazing down at me as I gazes up at him.’

Zilla patted Leah’s gaunt cheek. ‘You are so poetical, my dear.’

‘And you must be starving, old girl.’ Leah
cleared her throat with a loud harrumph and went to the fire to fill a bowl with soup. ‘Sit down and eat up. I’ve got to go back to me stall before young Myrtle gets the hump.’ She turned a stern face to Effie. ‘Now don’t you start talking nonsense about moving on at this time in the evening; your boy needs his sleep and you shall have the van. Zilla and me can share a bed beneath the stars as is our wont on a night like this. I shall look up at Eddie and Zilla will keep me company.’

Leah disappeared into the dusky shadows and Zilla lowered herself down onto the ground with her skirts falling about her like a deflated hot-air balloon. She tucked her beard into the front of her dress while she supped soup straight from the bowl. When she had drained the last drop she licked her lips and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. She held the bowl out to Effie. ‘I could do with some more, ducks. Would you? It takes me a while to get to me pins again once I’ve sat down and me corsets are killing me.’

Balancing Georgie over her shoulder, Effie rose to her feet and did as Zilla asked. As she took her seat again she couldn’t resist voicing the question that had been on her lips ever since she first saw the bearded lady. ‘Is it real, ma’am? I mean, did it grow on your face?’

Zilla’s emerald eyes twinkled as she peered
at Effie over the rim of the bowl. ‘Let’s just say that it’s like everything in the fairground, duck – an illusion.’

‘So it’s not real then?’ Effie couldn’t hide her disappointment.

‘Oh, it’s real hair all right. This beard was cut off a Barbary pirate just afore he was hanged at Execution Dock, or so I’ve been led to believe.’

‘A pirate!’ Effie could hardly believe her ears. ‘A real live pirate?’

Zilla pulled a face. ‘Well, he’s dead now of course, but I was reliably informed by the man what sold it to me that it was the beard of Kemal the Cruel. Between you and me, ducks, I’ve a feeling the whiskers was cut off his old grandpa afore he croaked, but it’s a good story and I’m sticking to it.’

Effie sat in silence; her head was spinning with the strangeness of it all and she felt as though she had wandered into a weird dream world where nothing was as it seemed. The camp fires burned even more brightly as the shadows lengthened and deepened into dark canyons between the wagons. The shouts and laughter of the children gradually died away as they were sent off to bed and the murmured conversations of their mothers were drowned by the noise of the fairground. The musicians played their instruments even louder as they
competed with the barkers shouting out the attractions of the various stalls and sideshows. The scent of woodsmoke and damp earth struggled to overcome the heavy chemical-laden atmosphere that hung in a cloud over Bow Common, and overlying it all was the faint sweet smell of hot toffee and herb-scented stew. A strange feeling of lassitude made Effie’s limbs heavy and she was finding it increasingly difficult to keep her eyes open.

‘Best get yourself off to bed, girl,’ Zilla said gently. ‘You look done in and the poor little mite is already in the land of Nod.’

‘Are you sure you don’t mind giving up your bed for us?’ Effie asked anxiously. ‘Georgie and me have grown used to sleeping out on deck.’

‘On deck, you say?’

Effie bit her lip. She had not intended to give so much away. Leah had asked no questions and Effie would have preferred to keep their history to herself in case Jacob had reported their absence to the police. She had a nasty feeling that he would stop at nothing in order to gain control of Owen’s son. Shifting Georgie to a more comfortable position on her shoulder, she rose to her feet. ‘It’s a long story, Zilla. Would you mind if we left the details until morning? I’m very tired.’

‘Of course you are. Anyone can see that.
I didn’t mean to stick my nose into your business, my dear. Get some sleep and everything will look better in the morning.’

When she had settled Georgie for the night, Effie lay down on the bunk, curling her body protectively around her baby son. She had made up her mind to leave as early as possible next day in order to continue her search for Tom. She tried not to think of the dangers that might beset a thirteen-year-old boy travelling the rough streets of the East End alone and penniless. She could only hope and pray that he had found Toby who, despite his raffish lifestyle and reputation as a lady killer, would see that no harm came to her young brother. As her limbs relaxed and she began to drift off to sleep she remembered a conversation she had once had with Toby in the bar of the Prince of Wales tavern when she had graduated from scullery maid to helping Ben serve customers. As she recalled it was one of the rare moments when Toby had talked seriously about anything and in particular his past. He had spoken tenderly of his mother who had been a maidservant in a large house on the edge of Hackney Marshes. He had been born there, he said, but he had only been seven years of age when his mother died and he had been sent to live with her Romany family. Effie would have liked to know more about him,
but Toby had not been very forthcoming. ‘Where are you now, Toby?’ she murmured sleepily. ‘I pray to God that Tom is with you.’