The Winter Rose (40 page)

"Thank you, Mrs. Harris, I will," she said. "You've been incredibly help-ful. A very valuable source of information."

They'd left the Harrises' soon after and walked two streets south.
Sid stopped her at the mouth of an alley that snaked between two shops,
then motioned at her to go inside.

"More tunnels?" she'd asked worriedly.

"No tunnels. Promise."

The alley was damp. Water trickled down the center of it. Barrels
were stacked haphazardly against the sides, along with empty crates and
rub-bish bins. At the alley's end, however, there was a strangely neat
confluguration of wooden pallets and crates, topped off by what looked
to be a remnant of a ship's sail. Sid held a finger to his lips, then
carefully lifted up the sail's edge.

India peered inside. At first she saw only a pile of rags, but then
as she continued to stare down at it she realized it was a woman she was
looking at. And a child. India recognized her; she was the woman from
the pub. The one who'd come begging. She was sleeping, her body curled
around her daughter's. They had covered themselves with old clothes,
flour sacks, a scrap of carpet. There was a half-empty gin bottle near
the woman's head and grease-stained newspaper from what must have been a
meal of fish and chips. Just as Sid motioned for them to leave, the
woman's eyes fiew open. In a heartbeat she was on her feet, a knife in
her hand.

"Easy now, Kitty," Sid said, backing away. "We meant no harm. Just wanted to see that you and the nipper were all right."

Kitty blinked woozily. "Sorry, Mr. Malone. Give me a start, you did."

"No, I'm sorry. Go back to sleep now." Kitty's girl whimpered and
stirred. Her filthy hands scrabbled at the scraps of fabric. "Here, have
this," Sid said. He took off his jacket and placed it over the sleeping
girl. "Good night, luv," he said, tipping his hat. Kitty nodded wearily
and lay down with her child.

There were more stops. She met Ed Archer, a widower, taking care of
his backward son by himself. They were living under a train trestle
because no landlord would have the boy. He set things alight when his
father went out to work. The authorities tried to put him in a home, but
Ed wouldn't have it. He'd been in one once, when he was little. The
orderlies said Willie was troublesome. So they'd tied him to his bed.
For three months. Ed said he'd kill his son, and then himself, before he
ever let anyone take the lad again.

There was Alvin Binns, a dockworker. He lived in a windowless cellar
room with his wife and two young children. The wife was consumptive. The
children, too. She knew she was dying and had told India that all she
wanted now was for her children to go first so that she could look after
them until the end and keep them from the workhouse.

There were Ada and Annie Armstrong, sisters. Ada was a cripple who
did piecework. Annie worked at the sugar factory by day and helped her
sister make paper flowers by night. And still, all they had to eat was
bread and marge, sometimes with jam, and boiled potatoes for their tea.
Most of their money went to pay for Ada's visits to the doctor and the
medicine she needed to dull the pain in her twisted legs, Annie
explained. India saw Ada's eyes grow worried at this, saw her thin
fingers twist the kerchief she held. Annie saw it, too, and quickly
added how fast Ada was with her flower-making, and how she sang while
they worked, and that her songs were so pretty it didn't feel as if they
were working at all. She said it was the nicest thing in the world to
come home from a hard day and find a hot cup of tea waiting. India saw
how neatly Ada's hair was plaited. How white her blouse was. Many would
have resented Ada. Annie adored her.

Outside the sisters' house, Sid lit a cigarette and said, "Still preaching the gospel of porridge?"

India did not reply to his question. Instead she asked one of her own. "How do they all know you?"

"Who?"

"Don't play games. All the people we've visited, how do they know you? I can't quite see Annie and Ada knocking up a wharf."

"Knocking off a wharf."

"Sid..."

"I have businesses here, don't I? Some of these people work for me. Others I see coming and going, that's all."

"No, that's not all," India said. "You know their names. You talk to
them. Ask after them." She hesitated, then said, "You give them money,
don't you?"

Sid picked up his pace. India nearly had to trot to keep up with him.
She grabbed his arm, stopping him. "Freddie says you have pots of
money. And no one knows what you do with it. You don't have houses. Or
horses. You don't wear expensive clothes. You don't have a wife or
children." She paused, then said, "Earlier I asked you who you were. I
know now."

"Oh, you do?"

"You're a modern-day Robin Hood."

Sid laughed out loud. "You've read too many fairy stories, Doctor. I've told you, I'm a businessman, that's all."

"Then why are you doing this? Why do you care?"

"It's good for business, ain't it? People can't come to me pubs and gaming establishments if they're dead, can they?"

After the Armstrongs, Sid took her through alleys and closes where
women sold themselves for fourpence. To basement steps where orphan boys
huddled together against the night. To rubbish heaps where old men
fought with starving dogs for scraps. And then they'd come to Christ
Church. To sit and eat something before she made the trip back to
Bedford Square.

India took another swallow of her porter now. And then another. She'd
emptied most of the bottle. She wasn't used to alcohol. It made her
feel light-headed. She wondered if she was drunk. She suddenly heard a
baby's cry. A woman was carrying a basket. She put it down against the
wall of the Ten Bells, a pub across the street from the church. She
started to sing, im-portuning the Ten Bells' patrons with pretty
ballads, but they ignored her. Each time she finished a song she rushed
back to the basket, bending low over it. The cries were coming from the
basket, and were punctuated by fits of coughing.

"Pneumonia," India said dully. "Hear the wheezing?"

The woman kissed the baby, then resumed her singing. She switched to a
musichall song, trying hard to make her voice merry, but India could
hear the desperation lying just beneath the forced cheer.

The baby's cries, the raucous laughter of the drunken pub-goers, the
poor mother singing brokenly--they swirled around in India's aching head
until she couldn't bear it any longer. She grabbed the bag of pork pies
and dashed down the steps. "Here, take these," she said, thrusting them
at the woman. "And here..." She reached into her pocket where she had
about a pound's worth of coins. "Here's money ere's more ...there ...for
a room. Get a warm room. Keep the baby close to a fire. If there's a
kettle, let her breathe steam."

"Thank you, missus!" the woman said. "Oh, thank you!" She kissed
India's cheek, then picked up her baby and headed toward Wentworth
Street, where there were lodging houses.

"Bring her to Varden Street tomorrow," India shouted after her. "To
the surgery there. Ask for Dr. Jones. Do you hear me? Dr. Jones!" She
was loud. Too loud. People were looking at her. She didn't care.

"Come on, India." It was Sid. He was suddenly by her side. "It's
late. I should get you home." He flagged a hackney, helped her in, then
took the seat opposite her.

India, still looking down the street after the woman and her baby,
said, "She'll be dead by morning. Her lungs are full of fluid. Did you
hear it? Did you see how blue she was?"

She wanted to cry. For the young mother singing for her baby. For
Mag-gie Harris and her children. And Ed Archer and his damaged son. For
all the people she'd seen tonight and the thousands more she hadn't. She
wanted to cry for them and for herself. For the woman she'd been only
hours ago, the confident know-it-all, the doctor who thought she could
solve all her patients' problems with porridge and broccoli. She wanted
to cry until her throat was raw and her sides ached and there were no
more tears left in her. But she did not.

"You've gone quiet. What is it?" Sid asked.

"It's such a hard world. Such an ugly world. Sometimes it seems like a fool's errand to try to change it for the better."

"Don't talk that way."

India looked at him. "After what we've just seen? Why not?"

"Just don't. It's not you."

After half an hour's ride the hackney stopped at Bedford Square. Sid got out, helped India down, then saw her safely inside.

"Thank you for bringing me home. And for what you did at the jail.
And for supper. And everything else. It's been quite an adventure."
There were a few seconds of silence, then she said, "Would you ...did
you want to come upstairs for a cup of tea?"

Sid shook his head. "You need your rest. And I've got business."

He leaned close, meaning to reach past her and open the inner door for her. And then his eyes caught hers.

"Who are you, Sid?" she asked for the second time that night, desperate to know, but he gave her no answer.

She took his face in her hands. She wanted to see him, to look into
his eyes, but they were closed now. "Look at me. Look at me, Sid," she
whis-pered. He did. His eyes were dark and beautiful, full of sadness
and grief.

He pulled her to him and kissed her, hard and fierce. And she kissed
him back, arms around his neck, clinging to him as if she would never
let go. He smelled of coal smoke and the river. He tasted of beer and
ciga-rettes. His arms around her felt like nothing she'd ever known and
every-thing she'd ever wanted.

He broke the kiss and looked at her, asking her wordlessly. She knew
what he wanted; she wanted the same thing. She wanted to feel his skin
next to hers, to press her body, her heart, her very soul, against his.

"I'll tell the cab to go," he said, and his words broke the spell.

What on earth was she doing? She was engaged, for God's sake. To
Freddie. Freddie, who was kind and upstanding and good and who loved
her. She stepped back, terrifled of her own feelings, and shook her
head.

"No. No, don't. I can't do this. I'm sorry....I'm engaged. ...I should never have done this," she said.

Sid nodded. His eyes were wounded, but his voice was biting. "Still
scared of me, are you? Too right, Dr. Jones. Never trust us criminal
types, we'll kill you soon as look at you." And with that he was gone.

"Sid, wait!" she cried, but he was already down the steps and on the sidewalk.

India watched him climb back into the hackney, watched it pull away.

"You're wrong. So wrong," she whispered. "It's not you I'm scared of. Can't you see that? It's me."

Freddie, seated by the fire in the large sitting room of his Chelsea
flat, one leg dangling over the arm of his chair, wondered if Chopin had
ever visited

England.

He must have, he thought, watching the rain pound against his
windows, his music box playing. What other country could have inspired
the man to write the "Raindrop Prelude"?

The filthy gray evening matched his filthy gray mood perfectly.
Things were still not going well for him. Gemma, as good as her word,
had broken up the Labour rally, and the press had run highly
unflattering accounts of the event, but it didn't seem to matter.
Bristow's popularity had been unaf-fected. In fact, it was only growing.
In direct contrast to his own.

He sighed, took a swallow of port, and wished he could visit Gemma
tonight. A good roll in bed with her would do him a world of good, but
he was supposed to go to some beastly awful do-gooding thing with India.
He couldn't remember where it was, or what it was about. Temperance?
Pub-lic health reform? Whatever it was, he was certain to find himself
forced to make conversation with bluestockings and Quakers all bent on
med-dling in the lives of the poor. He wanted to shoot himself at the
very thought.

A knock on the door to his flat startled him. He rose to answer it.
The maid had gone home. He could no longer afford to keep her past noon.
He opened the door, expecting the postman perhaps, or a delivery boy,
but it was India. She was drenched.

"You're early, darling," he said, surprised to see her. She'd said she would come at seven and it was only five.

"Yes. Yes, I suppose I am. Sorry."

"No, no! That's not what I meant at all. I'm delighted to see you. Take your wet things off and sit down."

She hung her mackintosh in the foyer and took Freddie's vacant chair.

"Cup of tea? Warm you up a bit?"

"I would prefer a brandy, I think."

"Really?" he said.

"Yes, please."

That's unusual, he thought, walking to the sideboard where he kept his liquor. She rarely drinks.

"Freddie, I've something to ask of you," she said.

He put the heavy brandy decanter down with a thump. Oh, Christ. Oh
no, he thought, his heart sinking. She's come to tell me she wants to
post-pone the wedding. Yet again. Bloody hell.

"Could we possibly make the date of our wedding earlier? August per-haps, instead of October?"

He turned, struggling to hide his shock. "Of course we can, darling. Whatever you wish. Why the sudden change?"

"I just ...I ust think that October's too long to wait. You have a
difficult election coming up and I thought that it might be helpful to
you to have a wife by then. By your side. Helping you."

Freddie smiled. He didn't believe a word of it. There could be only
one reason for this and he knew what it was. The signs were all there.
She looked thinner. Pale. Agitated. He put her brandy down on a nearby
table and knelt by her chair.

"Darling, have you anything else to tell me?" he asked, taking her hands in his.

Her eyes widened. She looked alarmed. "Anything else? Of course not!
Not at all. Like what?" she asked, a note of panic in her voice.