The Winter Rose (39 page)

India recoiled. She shook her head vehemently. "Never! How can you
even suggest it? Freddie is a gentleman. He would never stoop to such
tactics."

Sid held up his hands. "Sorry. My mistake. Must have been someone else."

The barmaid delivered two plates. Each held a mountain of mashed
po-tatoes doused in brown gravy and three fat sausages. India tucked in.
Sid watched her, pleased. Just as he'd picked up his own fork, a woman
came up to the table, dragging a child by the hand. The child was thin,
her expression vacant. The woman's face was bloated. Her breath reeked
of gin.

"Spare something for the girl, please, Mr. Malone?" she begged.

India was about to give the child her meal when Sid reached into his
pocket and handed the woman some coins. When she realized he'd given her
a whole pound, she grabbed his hand and kissed it.

"Oi, Kitty! On your bike!" the barmaid shouted, rushing out from behind the bar. "Sorry, Mr. Malone."

"No harm done," he said.

India stabbed at her potatoes with her fork, then looked at Sid. "Why
did you do that?" she asked. "You should have let me give them my meal.
You're only encouraging drunkenness. She's going to run straight to the
next pub and spend it on gin."

"So what?"

"So what? She shouldn't be drinking!"

"Why not? What else has she got?"

"A child, for starters."

Sid shook his head. "Girl's a half-wit. Neither of them's going to
last long, are they? Maybe the gin will give them a bit of warmth, a bit
of comfort."

"They'd be better off with milk. And porridge. And green vegetables."

"Not a lot of comfort in broccoli."

"No, but there's a lot of nourishment."

There it was--the lecturing tone again. India, the woman he'd held in
the tunnel, the soft, vulnerable, feeling woman, was gone. Dr. Jones
was back.

"Can you not understand the desire for comfort?" he asked her. "Have you never needed any yourself?"

"If I have, I haven't sought it in a gin bottle. Or an opium pipe," she replied tartly.

Sid shook his head. He regretted inviting her for supper now. It was al-ready going badly and they'd only just been served.

"Don't you shake your head at me," she said hotly. "Look around
your-self! At the men drinking their wages. Pint after pint after pint.
They starve themselves to drink. And their wives and children, too.
They'll go home from here--all of them--with only pennies in their
pockets--"

"For Christ's sake, leave it be," he said angrily. "You don't know
what you're talking about! Have you ever put in a sixteen-hour day at
the docks? Heaving coal or sides of beef in the cold and the rain till
you'd thought you'd drop dead? Then gone home to the wife and five kids,
all stuffed into one drafty room? Some of them sick, all of them
hungry. You have any idea of the desperation in those rooms? Of the
anger? Can you blame a man for wanting to forget it all for an hour with
a pint or two in a nice warm pub?"

India sat back in her chair. "Have you always been this way, Sid? So willfully blind to what's right and what's wrong?"

"Have you always been this way, India? Such a righteous bitch?"

India looked as if he'd struck her. Her fork clattered to her plate.
Sid stared at it--at the pile of mash, at the half-eaten sausages in a
slick of gravy--then he picked it up and heaved it into the fire.

"Have you gone utterly mad?" she hissed.

"Still hungry?" he asked her.

"Yes. As a matter of fact, I am. And you've just wasted--"

"Tired?"

"Yes, but I don't see..."

"Sore?"

"Quite."

"Good. Welcome to the working class. Now get up."

"What? Why? Where are we going?"

"To meet your patients."

Sid threw some money down, then hustled India up from the table. "Come on," he said, taking her arm.

Out in the street, she shook him off violently. "I'm not going
anywhere with you. I've met my patients, thank you. At Gifford's
surgery. In the hospital."

"Ever been in their homes?"

"Of course I have! Where do you think I deliver their babies?"

Sid gave a dismissive snort. "Bet they cleaned before you came. Bet
the women got down on their hands and knees and scrubbed the floor,
pains and all, knowing you were coming. Me mam did that. All the mams
did. Didn't want the doctors and the midwives thinking they didn't keep a
clean house. And here's another thing--"

"I do not need to be told how to do my job. Not by you." India turned to-ward the street and held her hand up to hail a cab.

"You're wrong about the porridge. Dead wrong," Sid said, trailing after her.

"Good night, Mr. Malone."

"You said your patients should eat porridge. You're wrong about that."

India turned and stalked back to him, her eyes sparking anger. "No,
ac-tually I'm right about that. I could empty half the hospitals in
London if I could convince my patients to eat porridge and milk for
breakfast instead of bread and tea."

Sid was only inches away from India now, meeting her anger with his
own. "Poor women can't cook porridge, don't you know that? Of course you
don't. Because you don't know shit about the poor. Oh, you talk about
them plenty. And you probably talk at them, too. But have you ever
talked with them? I don't think so, because if you had you'd know that
porridge has to be boiled. That takes coal, and coal costs money. And
even if they could afford the expense, they still wouldn't eat porridge.
Put it on any table in Whitechapel and it'll be thrown straight out the
window. It's too much like skilly, the shit that's served in the spike.
Ever been taken to a workhouse, India? Ever had your kids taken from
you? Every last scrap of dignity stripped away? Think you'd ever want to
eat what you'd been forced to eat there?"

India didn't reply. She just waved her hand furiously at an approaching cab.

"Ah, sod it. Why am I wasting my breath?" Sid reached into his
pocket, then took her free hand and slapped some coins into it. "For the
cab. Ta-ra." He strode off, then he stopped suddenly and spun around.
"Do you want to be great?" he shouted at her back. There was no
response. "India, do you?" Still no response. "You're a good doctor. Do
you want to be a great one?"

Slowly her hand came down. She turned to him. "You tell me why first."

"Why what?"

"Why you're trying to take me on some mad house call instead of
robbing banks or cracking safes or whatever it is that you do with your
evenings."

"Because a bad man wants to do a good deed," he said, repeating what he'd overheard Ella say some weeks back in India's office.

India looked embarrassed, but quickly recovered. "You shouldn't eaves-drop and you shouldn't be flippant."

"I've never been more serious. They need you."

"Who?"

Sid spread his arms wide. "Them. All of them. All of the poor fucking
blighters trying to stay alive in this poor fucking place."

"You have a colossally foul mouth. Do you know that?" Her eyes nar-rowed. "I think you're drunk."

"I wish. Are you coming?"

"Not until you tell me why it matters to you."

Sid didn't answer for a few seconds. When he did, his voice was low.
"Because I had a family once. Here in Whitechapel. A mum. A brother. Two
sisters. Me baby sister was ill. Consumption. We spent all we had
trying to cure her. She had a bad turn one night and me mam went out to
fetch a doctor. It was dark and late. She was killed, me mam. Murdered.
On the street outside our door."

"My God," India said.

"They took our money--the so-called doctors--and did nothing. Nothing
except shame me mam, telling her she wasn't taking proper care of the
baby. Not feeding her right. Not keeping her away from the damp. Can you
believe that? Keep her out of the damp? In fucking London?" He shook
his head. "If we'd had a place we could have taken her, a good place,
things might've been different. For her. For me mam..."

"For you," India said softly.

Sid looked away. She stared at him searchingly, then said, "Who are you, Sid?"

"No one you want to know."

"Missus! I've got better things to do than stop here all night. Do you want a cab or not?" the driver yelled.

India looked at the driver. She bit her lip. "No, I don't. Sorry,"
she told him. She handed Sid back his money. "Come on, then," she said.
"Let's go."

India sat on the stone steps of Christ Church on Whitechapel's
Com-mercial Street, staring into the darkness, clutching a half-empty
bottle of porter. The church bells had just rung the hour--midnight. Sid
sat next to her, holding a greasy paper containing two uneaten pork
pies.

"You all right?"

"I will be."

"It was too much. I shouldn't have done it."

"I just need a minute."

Four hours ago she had stepped out of the London she'd known and into
another city entirely. She'd read Dante's Inferno once when she was a
girl, and she'd felt this evening, as she had then, as if she'd
descended into an abyss. As if each step she took along the narrow
streets of Whitechapel brought her deeper into hell itself.

Their first stop had been a lighterman's home--John Harris, a man Sid
said he sometimes worked with. India had sat teetering on a
three-legged chair in Maggie Harris's kitchen. She was careful to keep
her feet together, to avoid stepping on the children sleeping under the
table.

"So how much is that total, Mags--between the piecework and John's
wages?" Sid asked. He was leaning against a wall, arms crossed over his
chest.

"Round about a pound a week," Maggie answered, never taking her eyes
from her work. She was gluing the outsides of matchboxes together. A boy
and three girls sat with her at the table--they ranged in age from
seven to twelve--gluing the insides.

"For how many?"

"There are ten of us. Me, the mister, five girls and three boys."

"What do you get for the matchboxes alone, Mrs. Harris?" India asked.

"Tuppence a gross."

Two pennies for 144 matchboxes, she thought, blinking. Mrs. Harris
and her children had to make one thousand four hundred and forty boxes
to earn one shilling. She sneezed. The fumes from the glue were
eye-watering. They made her dizzy. Or maybe it was the wobbly chair
making her feel that way. Or maybe it was Sid. Being with him made her
feel totally off balance, as if the ground were shifting under her.

"Mam," the littlest girl whispered. "Mam, I'm tired." Her small,
pinched face had no color in it except for the purplish circles under
her eyes.

"Just a few more, luv," Mrs. Harris said. "Here," she added, sliding a cracked cup across the table. It contained cold tea.

India glanced at the battered clock on the kitchen mantel. It was ten thirty. The children should have been asleep hours ago.

"What's the rent here?"

"Twelve and six," Mrs. Harris said. Then she dutifully answered Sid's
questions about the price of food and coal, and what she spent a week
on both. Sid and India had knocked on Maggie Harris's door ten minutes
ago. Sid had introduced India and said she was going to open a clinic in
Whitechapel and was conducting a health survey.

"Crikey, not another one," Maggie Harris had sighed, ushering them
in. "Had one of them do-gooders in just last week telling me to feed
this lot bean soup. Bleedin' bean soup! They'd never be out of the
jakes."

"You ever feed them porridge or broccoli?" Sid asked, throwing India a look.

She threw him one back. Why did he always make her feel that she was in the wrong? She wasn't the criminal, he was.

Mrs. Harris snorted laughter. "Porridge? Oh, aye. The butler brings
it on a silver tray. As for broccoli, it stinks up the house something
terrible and the kiddies just heave at it. Bread and marge is what we
eat. Cabbage and potatoes for tea. With a relish--trotters or a bit of
bacon, maybe--for me husband. Tripe sometimes. Or slink..."

"Slink?" India repeated.

"Calves what have been born too early."

"Ah."

"Sometimes saveloys for the nippers when me husband's got something
extra." Her eyes flicked up to Sid, worried and hopeful at once. "Any
chance of that?"

"In a day or two," Sid said. "Removals job. We'll need John's boat."

The woman's relief was palpable. "God bless you."

"There's a bit of dosh attached to the doctor's survey, too," Sid said, reaching into his pocket. "Five quid."

It was an outrageous amount, and Maggie knew it. "We don't need no hand-outs," she said fiercely.

"It's not a hand-out," Sid said. He looked at India. "It's payment for ser-vices rendered."

"Why isn't she carrying the money then?" Maggie asked. "Why've you got it?"

"Because she asked me to. I'm her escort. No one's going to rob me,
are they? There's toffs behind this clinic, Mags. Just shovellin' money
at it. It's proper wages for proper work. Tell her, Dr. Jones."

"Mr. Malone is correct, Mrs. Harris," India said, quickly stepping
in. "We are conducting a survey of the Whitechapel population to
ascertain the best way to apportion our resources and to help us draw up
a comprehensive and effective plan of treatment that encompasses both
preventive and palliative medicine. We have funds to pay those who take
part in the survey."

Maggie looked down at the matchbox she was holding. India could see
she was struggling with herself. Maggie's children looked at their
mother. Without hope. Without expectation. Without anything at all.

She's not going to take the money, India thought. Five pounds, a
small fortune, and she's not going to take it. India was about to
remonstrate with Maggie when the woman finally lifted her head and said,
"You've any more questions need answering, Dr. Jones, you come back and
see me."

The woman's words were an attempt at pride. She wanted her children
to think she'd earned the money. Pride, of all things! Here in two tiny,
dingy, airless rooms. With eight hungry mouths to feed. The stupidity
of it made India want to scream. Or cry. She didn't know which. And then
the littlest girl, tired as she was, looked at her mother and smiled.
And India suddenly understood that this tiny scrap of pride was all that
Maggie Har-ris had to give her children.