The Winter Rose (43 page)

Sid closed his eyes, fingers rubbing his throbbing head again, and
for an instant it wasn't night and he wasn't here with Madden and Griz
and every other thief and cutthroat in London. He was by the sea. With
India. And it was morning. He quickly pushed the image out of his mind.
He'd been thinking of her constantly since the night he'd kissed her in
Whitechapel. And he didn't want to. She'd hurt him, made him feel like a
fool. But worse than that, she'd made him love her. He could forgive a
woman a lot of things, but he couldn't forgive that.

Shouts suddenly went up; a burst of applause was heard. Sid opened
his eyes. Gemma had arrived, looking spectacular in a turquoise satin
gown, its every fold and tuck designed to showcase her splendid figure.
She was wearing the dazzling diamond necklace and earrings he'd given
her, plus an armful of bracelets and a knuckle-duster of a ring. She
turned every head in the place. Madden's eyes crawled over her.

Gemma was stunning, and Sid knew he should feel proud of her.
Pos-sessive. Lustful. Something. But he didn't. He felt nothing. He also
knew he should go to her, so he did.

"Well if it isn't the Gaiety's brightest new star," he said, coming up behind her.

Gemma whirled around. "Why, Mr. Malone, you dressed up for me!" she exclaimed, looking him up and down.

Sid smiled. He'd changed his uniform of dungarees and shirtsleeves
for a suit. "You were wonderful, Gem," he said. "Everyone's saying so."
He kissed her cheek.

"Who's saying so? Who's here?" she asked, glancing around the room.

Her quick eyes darted everywhere at once, and Sid knew she was sizing
up her guests, calculating who could do what for her. She was on the
make. As was everyone else in the room. It was their way. Her way. His.
It was the East London way.

The urge to walk out came over him again. He wanted to leave the
Al-hambra, the party, the whole bleeding East End. He took her arm.

"Come for a stroll with me, Gem," he said. He needed to walk with
her, talk with her. He needed her to hold him. Hold him here. Hold him
down. To this place. This life.

"A stroll? Now? Are you mad? I just got here."

Maybe that's it, he thought. Maybe I am mad.

"I know what you're after and you're not having it," she added, with a
sly smile. "You'll ruin my dress. There'll be time for that later. Now,
Sid luv, who said I was great?"

Sid forced a smile. "Billy Madden did. Go say hello to him. He wants to congratulate you."

"You don't mind?"

"Not a bit. Go on, pet. It's your night. Have fun."

Go, Gem. Go to him, he thought, watching her walk away. He'll treat
you better than I ever did. He'll give you everything you need.
Everything you want.

He'd just ordered another whisky when Frankie, Ronnie, and Tom all
walked up to him. He could tell something was wrong. "What's up?" he
asked tightly.

"Trouble at the Taj," Ronnie said.

"What kind of trouble?"

"Brass tried to off herself. Made a bit of a mess. Susie's in a right state."

Sid told Tom to tell Gemma he'd been called away and to stay and look after her; then he, Ronnie, and Frankie left for the Taj.

"Flippin' hell, Sid, what took you?" Susie shrilled when they
arrived. "What'll I do with the body? How will I get rid of it? What if
the rozzers come sniffing?"

"Calm down, Susie. Tell me what happened," Sid said.

Susie explained that one of her girls had become distraught because
her best customer had thrown her over for someone younger. "There was a
fight. That's something I never tolerate. The men who come here don't
want to listen to rowing. They get plenty of that at home."

"The girl?"

"I sacked her for fighting, didn't I? And then the silly bitch goes
and swallows a bottle of arsenic I'd got for the mice. Bloody cheek!"

"She's dead now?"

"If she ain't yet, she soon will be."

"Where is she?"

"Upstairs. Room Eight."

When they reached the landing--a large, open room where the girls sat
waiting for punters--Susie shook her head. "Just look at this bleeding
mess, will you?" she grumbled. "Knocked the whole flippin' room apart,
she did. Smashed a good mirror. Me favorite vase, too. I'm taking it
from her wages. Dead or not."

She opened the door of Room Eight. A woman lay on the narrow bed,
eyes closed, clutching her stomach. White froth fiecked her lips. As
they stood there, she lunged forward and vomited onto the floor.

"Bloody hell!" Frankie yelled, backing out of the room.

"Still here then, Molly?" Susie asked.

The woman moaned.

"What do we do?" Ronnie asked.

"Let nature take its course," Susie said. "If she lives, she lives.
If not, it's into the river with her. I don't want the rozzers involved.
They've given me enough trouble lately as it is. That wanker of a
Donaldson paid us a visit yesterday, you know. Luckily one of his lads
is a customer and gave me ad-vance notice. I had time to get the punters
out the back door and the girls downstairs before he showed up. I've
had to put two lads on at the door, though, with orders not to let any
strangers in. Only regulars. In case it's coppers pretending to be
punters. Costing me a bomb, it is."

"April, April!" Molly sobbed.

"What's she saying?" Sid asked.

"April's her baby," said a new voice.

Sid looked up. A group of girls had gathered in the doorway. The one
who'd spoken gazed back at him with dark, dead eyes. Another, naked from
the waist up, leaned on the jamb. She had the pallor of an opium
addict.

"For April, please..." Molly said, her eyes wild with fear. She pushed something toward him. He saw that it was a pound note.

"I'll have that," Susie said, reaching for the money. "I've got the whole parlor to refurbish thanks to you."

"Leave it," Sid said.

He looked at the prostitute's face. He saw bruises and scars. Some
fresh, some old. He saw her thin, wasted limbs and the threadbare gown
covering them. He looked into her eyes and saw something else--a
har-rowing fear. Not for herself, but for her child. She was hanging on,
fighting the poison, fighting the pain, trying to find someone to care
for her child.

Sid looked, and saw another woman dying, long ago. Not in a room, but
in the street. His mother. He saw her white face, her bloodstained
clothes. And he wondered if she had felt this woman's terror at leaving
her children behind, alone and unprotected in a place like Whitechapel.
He remem-bered holding her lifeless body, trying to stop the constables
from taking her away. The despair he'd felt then, the rage and the
guilt, flooded back.

"Number eighteen Wentworth Street ...Mrs. Edwards ...she has
her....Please ... oh, God!" Molly clutched her stomach again, curling
into herself, keening with the pain.

"Listen. Listen to me," Sid said, kneeling by the bed. "The baby'll be all right. I'll see that she's looked after. I promise."

Molly closed her eyes. Tears ran down her cheeks. She gave a wrenching cry, then started to convulse.

"Christ, somebody help her," Sid said wildly. "Call for a doctor.
Ronnie, get Dr. Jones. Go!" Some of the girls gasped; others started to
cry. "Susie! Frankie! Get her up!" Sid yelled.

The woman's tortured body shuddered through another convulsion and then she was still.

"Jesus Christ," he whispered.

"Guv, it's all right," Frankie said. "It's just a dead brass, is all."

"Shut up, Frankie," Sid said. His hand came up to his head again. The
pain inside it was so great, it was nearly blinding. He looked around.
At the dingy flocked wallpaper, the stained bed, and the dead woman upon
it. At the vomit on the floor and the human wreckage in the doorway.
And he felt sick to his very soul.

"Get her out of here. Get her buried," Sid said.

"We can't bury her. There'll be too many questions," Frankie said. "We'll take her to the river. Like Susie said to."

Sid thought of the little girl. How she'd never know her mother. A
grave would be something. Somewhere to go. Years from now. Somewhere to
mourn.

"Take her to Christ Church. To the digger there. Do it now."

"He'll talk."

"Pay him not to!" Sid shouted, turning on Frankie.

"Sid, she's a fucking whore!" Frankie yelled back. "She's not worth the risk! Not now, when Donaldson's on top of us."

Their noise drew attention. All down the long hallway, doors opened. Disheveled girls and their punters peered out from them.

"Go back inside. This doesn't concern you," Sid said.

Some did, some didn't.

"What's the matter? Are you bleedin' deaf?" he yelled.

A man who was standing in a nearby doorway, puffing on a cigar said, "Who the hell are you?"

His voice was like a match to a fuse. Sid was on him in an instant.
He punched him in the face, shattering his nose. The man dropped to his
knees, screaming. Sid picked him up, dragged him into the sitting room,
and threw him against a table. It collapsed under his weight. The
bottles of whisky and gin on top of it smashed. Girls flattened
themselves against the walls of the room, or hid behind furniture,
squeaking with fright. The man tried to get up. Sid stood over him.

"You know who I am now?" he asked.

The man moaned.

"Good. Get your things and get out."

Susie crawled out from behind the settee where she'd hidden. "That's
bloody great, Sid! Look what you've done!" she shrilled. "Smashed up me
table and all me booze! Who's going to pay for that? Me, I suppose?"

Sid turned to her. He took a wad of notes from his pocket, peeled off
one after another, and tossed them into the air. They fluttered to the
carpet. He threw the whole wad up. It contained hundreds of pounds. Far
more than the cost of the broken furniture. The girls scrambled for the
notes. Susie, still on her hands and knees, snatching up as many as she
could, screeched at them to leave off.

"What are you doing, guv?" Frankie shouted. "You lost your mind?"

"Get the woman buried. Then find her baby," he said. "Find someone to
look after it. Give whoever it is fifty quid and tell her to come to me
for more. Tell her if anything happens to the baby, it's me she'll
answer to."

"But, Sid..."

Sid closed his eyes, trying to control his anger. He didn't want to
hit Frankie. He really didn't. "Don't say another word. Do what I told
you to."

Frankie shook his head. He stalked off to the dead woman's room and
began wrapping her body in the dirty bedsheets. Ronnie helped him.
Susie, standing now and stuffing money down the front of her dress,
looked dag-gers at him, but said nothing. The Taj was emptying. Some men
stayed, but most hurried down the stairs and out the door. Sid watched
them go, then he walked through the parlor, down another hallway, to a
room he used as an office. It had been Denny Quinn's office once. Denny
had been mur-dered in it. The stains were still on the floor.

He sat down at the desk and lowered his head into his hands. He had
wanted to fetch India to try to save Molly. Now he was glad there had
been no time. He remembered how angry she'd been about the whores at
Ko's. What would she have thought of this place? And of him for keeping
it?

She would have blamed me for Molly's death, he thought. And she would have been right.

"Damn you, woman. Damn you!" he shouted.

He picked up an inkwell and hurled it at the wall. He threw books,
ledgers, a lamp. He kicked the desk until it splintered. And then,
played out and panting, he leaned over, hands on his knees, to catch his
breath, and saw a box under the desk tied up with brown paper and
string. It had arrived yesterday from Amsterdam, hidden in the hold of a
ship. He swore at it, then picked it up.

"This is it. One last visit and then I'm done with you. Done," he said.

He left the Taj, got into his carriage, and gave his driver an
address. Inside, he sat back and looked at his hands. They were shaking.
He never shook. Never. He felt like he was going to bits. He looked out
the window, trying to focus on something else. He saw London's night
people go by. Waiters closing down restaurants. Drunks staggering. Toffs
hopping into cabs. Beggars. Streetwalkers. Sailors on a binge. He
pressed his hands to his eyes, took a deep breath, then studied them
again. They were still shaking. He cursed, lit a cigarette, took a few
drags, then threw it out the window. Finally the driver pulled up to his
destination--Bedford Square, Bloomsbury.

He didn't get out for some time. He just sat in the carriage, looking
up at the building. In one of its windows he could see a woman sitting
at a desk. She was illuminated by the glow of a lamp.

I'm done with you, he'd said back at the Taj. But he didn't want to
be. He wanted to be up there, with her. He wanted to rest his head in
her lap, put his arms around her waist, and feel her strong, soothing
hands stroke his brow. He thought how happy he would be just to sit in
the same room with her. Just to talk and to listen. To ask about her
work and see the light come into her eyes as she told him about her day.
To watch the expressions play across her face, to make her laugh.
Christ, he'd even be happy to argue with her. About porridge or broccoli
or any bloody thing.

She was reading. He looked at his watch. It was nearly midnight, but
she was still up working. He was about to tell his driver to take him
back east, to the Alhambra, when his eyes fell on the box he'd brought
with him. He grabbed it and got out of the carriage. jones, number 2 ,
the nameplate read. He rang the bell.

A few minutes later India was at the door in a white nightgown and wrapper. Her blond curls hung loosely about her shoulders.

"Sid? My goodness, this is a surprise."

"The things you ordered came in," he said. "Sorry about the hour."

"The things?"