The Winter Rose (54 page)

The man laughed nervously. "You take her first, Frankie. Go on. I'll have her afterward."

"Shut up, you filthy sod."

"Please," Fiona said. "I came here to see Sid. Sid Malone. I'm a friend of his. I have to see him. Can you take me to him?"

Frankie's face darkened. "You're with the doctor, ain't you?" he said. It sounded more like an accusation than a question.

"The doctor," Fiona repeated. She was frightened and confused. She hadn't understood the question.

"I thought so," Frankie said angrily. "You meddling bitches can't
leave well enough alone, can you? Causing trouble wherever you go. But
you don't care, do you? It's all a game to you. You enjoy slumming.
Gives you a thrill, rubbing elbows with villains. Gives you something to
talk about at your tea parties. Want to live the life, do you? Well,
here you go, then."

Frankie released her wrist and picked up a barrel stave.

"No, please no," Fiona begged, raising her hands.

But it wasn't meant for her. Instead, Frankie swung the stave
straight into her attacker's face. There was a wet, sickening crunch as
his mouth exploded in a spray of blood, spit, and teeth.

Fiona screamed. She closed her eyes and pressed her hands over her
ears, but she couldn't block out the man's cries. It went on and on and
on, until she thought it would never stop. And then it became moaning,
and then there was nothing, no sound at all. She lowered her hands and
opened her eyes. The man, Ollie, was on the ground, motionless.

"No," she moaned. "Oh, God, no."

Frankie was standing over him, sides heaving. He dropped the stave,
turned to her, and grinned. She was backed against the wall, crouched
down. Frankie walked to her and crouched, too, until his face was only
inches from her own.

"Enjoy that?" he asked. "Still want to mix in our world?"

"Please let me go," she sobbed, hysterical now. "Please."

"You've messed him right up, you lot," he said. "He's turning his
back on his friends, his business. All because of you. He belongs here.
With us. Not with you. So here's a message for you: Leave Sid Malone the
fuck alone." He grabbed her chin. "Do you hear me?" he shouted.

Fiona tried to pull away from him, but he tightened his grip. "I said, Do you hear me?"

"Yes," she cried.

Frankie stood. "Go on. Get out of here," he said. Then he disappeared back up the stairs.

Fiona thought she would choke on the stench of death. Her head swam,
her vision blurred. Faint and you're done for, a voice inside her said.
Get up. For Katie's sake, for the baby's, get up!

She forced herself to stand. She was too afraid to climb the stairs,
too afraid she would see him again if she did--Frankie. She hurried to
the riverside door, past the motionless body and the blood puddled under
it. She trudged through the river mud, pulled herself up the wooden
steps that hugged the Barkentine, and found herself once again standing
on the cob-blestones outside of the pub.

I'm alive, she thought. Thank God, I'm alive.

The realization, sudden and bracing, got her moving. She stumbled,
started walking, then, hands holding her torn jacket together, she ran.
As fast and as far as she could. Away from the Barkentine and what lay
in its basement. Away from the man called Frankie. Away from her
brother. Down Narrow Street and into the dark London night.

India sat on an overturned tea chest in the Moskowitzes' yard. Her
face was flushed. Her sleeves were rolled up. She had a howling child in
a half-nelson.

"Martin! Stop your bloody squirming!" the child's mother yelled.

"Hold still now, Martin, that's it. I've got a sweetie for you if you do," India wheedled.

She aimed a pair of tweezers at Martin's right ear, willing her hand
to be steady. Insert them just far enough and she could grasp the dark
mass deep inside. Too far and she might puncture his eardrum.

Two chickens ran past, clucking loudly. Mrs. Moskowitz leaned out of
the kitchen window and shouted for potatoes. A dog barked in the alley
at the bottom of the yard. A cat screeched. Then a rubbish bin went
over, clanging loudly against the cobblestones. India took a breath and
shut it all out, her attention focused completely on the boy's tender
ear.

"Do you like chocolate buttons, Martin?" she asked him, turning his
head slightly to take better advantage of the light. "Or allsorts? I've
lemon drops, too. And mint humbugs."

Martin stopped squirming at the mention of humbugs and India saw her
chance. Two seconds later he was in his mother's arms, howling again,
and India was examining the mass pinched between the prongs of her
tweezers.

"A collar button," she said. "That explains the pain, Mrs. Meecher.
We'll give the ear a wash with carbolic and you do the same at home for a
week with salt water, and he'll soon be right as rain."

Martin sniffed loudly. "Humbugs," he said, eyeing India reproachfully. "I like humbugs."

"And you will have one, brave lad," she said, pulling a fat green sweet from her pocket.

"Thank you, miss," Martin's mother said. "Poor mite was sufferin'
some-thing terrible." She paused then sheepishly added, "Haven't got
much this week. Me old man's gone to the call-on every single morning
and not got picked. I brung you this. Will it do?" She drew a square of
butcher's paper from her pocket and handed it to India. India opened it.
Inside was a hand-tatted doily.

"It's lovely, Mrs. Meecher," India said warmly. "I know we'll find a good use for it. Thank you very much."

Mrs. Meecher smiled.

India stood. Ella was hurrying past, heading toward the shed with a
basin of warm, soapy water. "Your next is a six-year-old girl. Eczema, I
think. A bit hard to tell under all the dirt."

"Is the rash--" India started to say. She felt a sudden bump on her
back-side and turned around. It was Posy. She was scraping her fingers
around the inside of an empty honey jar and licking them.

"Watch where you're going, Posy!" Ella scolded.

"Mmmmmm..." Posy murmured, lurching off in a sugar trance.

"The rash, it's--" India began again.

"I'll be home by nine o'clock, Mama. Maybe ten. Don't wait!" shouted a
voice at the kitchen door. Yanki came bounding into the yard. He was
washed and brushed, neatly dressed, and eating an apple. He handed his
sister a pair of cuff links.

"Where are you skiving off to, Yeshiva Boy?" she asked, putting the basin down.

"I'm not skiving. I'm going to Rabbi Abramovitz's. For intensive
study," Yanki said, holding out one wrist then the other, between bites
of apple.

"Of what?"

"Torah, of course. What else?" he replied, sauntering off.

"Hmm. I don't know. Maybe young Mimi Abramovitz?"

Yanki didn't reply. Instead he turned and lobbed the remains of his apple into Ella's basin, dousing her.

"Ach, du Pisher!" she cried, blinking water from her eyes.

Yanki grinned. "Kush in toches arein, El."

"Yanki!" a voice screeched, but it wasn't Ella's. India looked toward
the back door and saw Mrs. Moskowitz advancing, wooden spoon in hand.
"I heard that! You go to read the Torah with such a mouth? At the
rabbi's house no less? With such a mouth you kiss your mother?"

"And Mimi Abramovitz," Ella said, smirking.

Mrs. Moskowitz stopped short. She put one hand to her chest. "The rabbi's daughter? Yanki, is this true?"

"No, Mama!" Yankie said, blushing furiously. "And don't go telling
the world that it is." He glared at his sister. "Just you wait," he
growled, then hurried through the yard and let himself out the back
gate.

Mrs. Moskowitz stood looking after him, smiling. "Imagine that! The
Abramovitzes for in-laws... halevei! That awful Alma Rosenstein tells
anyone who listens that the rabbi has chosen her son for his Mimi. Won't
she be pissing vinegar?" She turned and walked back toward the caf�
waving her wooden spoon like a conductor's baton, her anger at her son's
fresh mouth forgotten. Then she turned suddenly at the door, and
shouted, "Aaron! Miriam! Solomon! My chicken! Sometime this year, yes?"

"Yes, Mama!" Aaron shouted back from where he and his siblings were plucking chickens.

Ella shook her head. "If Florence Nightingale could only see this," she said.

"Twenty-three hundred cubic feet of space per lying-in patient."

"Impervious glazed tiles."

"Unlimited hot water."

"We've really got to do something about the chickens."

"And the cat."

India and Ella were silent for a few seconds, looking at the tattered
awning, the tumbledown shed. It was everything the textbooks said a
clinic should not be. And it was full of patients. Of poor mothers and
their chil-dren. Of pregnant women. Of the elderly. All sitting silently
and stoically. Never complaining. Prepared to wait all today and
tomorrow, too, if that's what it took to have a child's tonsils seen or a
baby's cough cured.

"I believe you asked about the rash, Dr. Jones. It's red, cracked, and weeping."

"Thank you, Sister Moskowitz."

"I'll be right in to assist. As soon as I get a fresh basin of
water," Ella said. She started for the kitchen, then turned around
again. "Indy?"

"Yes?"

"Still happy you moved into this madhouse?"

India smiled. She looked at the yard--at Posy toddling about with the
honey jar, at Miriam and Aaron and Solomon sitting in a swirling cloud
of feathers. At the old patched awning that Mr. Moskowitz and Yanki had
stretched from the shed to the privy to make a waiting room. At the
women sitting under it on an assortment of fruit crates and tea chests,
children on their laps. She looked at the old garden shed, all six by
eight of it, made spotless by soap and buckets of water. At the
underwear flapping on the clothesline. And then she laughed. It was a
real laugh--loud and genuine. It made her cheeks flush and crinkled her
eyes. It made her beautiful.

"I couldn't be happier, Ella," she said. "Truly."

She had her clinic. Despite the loss of her savings, and everything
else that had happened to her, she was seeing patients and practicing
medicine the way she wanted to--with compassion and integrity.

As she headed toward the shed to see her next patient she thought
about the transformation her life had undergone. Only a fortnight ago
she was living at genteel Bedford Square, earning a living at the
eminent Edwin Gifford's surgery, and engaged to the Liberal Party's
rising star. Now she was penniless, living with the Moskowitzes above
their caf�running a clinic in their yard. Her life was a shambles, yet
she was happier than she had ever been.

She remembered how it had all come about. She'd been so upset after
finishing with Freddie that she couldn't bear to be alone. After a
sleepless night she'd traveled to Brick Lane to see Ella. Ella had known
immediately that something was wrong. She'd hustled India to an empty
table, sat down with her, and demanded to be told everything.

So India told her. About Wish's will. And the fact that the money for
the clinic was gone. About Freddie and his scheming, and how he'd used
Alice Little to get her dismissed. She meant to have a quiet
conversation with her friend, but there was no such thing to be had at
the Moskowitzes'. Posy soon spotted her and climbed into her lap. Then
Miriam came with a comb and brush to pester Ella to braid her hair.
Yanki was next, looking for help with his tie. And then Mrs. Moskowitz,
sensing all was not well, came with a pot of tea. Where Mrs. Moskowitz
was, the rest of her family had to be, so in no time Mr. Moskowitz was
seated with them, along with Aaron, Solomon, and Solomon's friend
Reuben, who lived next door.

India spoke haltingly, expecting every minute to be told that her
tears made her ugly, that emotional displays were for actresses and
lapdogs. Those were the things her mother had always said. Instead there
were exclamations of sympathy and outrage from the older Moskowitzes.
Kisses from little Posy. A hug from Miriam. A grubby handkerchief from
Sol. And then there was talking. A great deal of it. Arguing, really--as
the family tried to decide upon India's best course of action.

"She should get the jewelry back. It's hers," Yanki said.

"No, she shouldn't. It has bad feelings attached to it," Ella countered.

"Feelings, shmeelings! She can pawn it," Mrs. Moskowitz said.

"She doesn't need to pawn his dreck. She can make her own way, she's a doctor."

"How? She can't find work anywhere! You neither, Ella!" That was Yanki again.

"That's not true! We've only started looking!"

India tried to get a word in, but she was only talked down. It soon
became clear to her that she was to sit silently and drink her tea. She
didn't understand why she was not to speak. She felt as if she were
entirely inci-dental to her own predicament.

She looked from one of them to another. At Mr. Moskowitz frowning
intently at his steepled fingers. At his wife refreshing everyone's
teacup. At Ella yelling at Yanki. At Posy, still in her lap, the fingers
of one tiny hand curled tightly around India's thumb.

And then tears welled behind her eyes, sharp and sudden, as she
un-derstood: this is what a family is. She was weary and frightened and
heart-sick. And they knew it. So they had taken her troubles away from
her, if only for a little while, and made them their own. She wiped her
eyes, hoping no one would see. No one did. They were all listening to
Ella, still yelling at her brother about her and India's job prospects.

"We've only tried three hospitals. There are plenty more. We'll find something," she said.

Yanki laughed. "It'll be the same story wherever you look. You'll be
lucky to get a cleaner's job. I'll bet Gifford blacklisted you."

"You don't know that."

"Wait, wait, wait!" Mrs. Moskowitz said. "I don't understand
something. Why are you both begging for work at these hospitals? All
I've heard for weeks is the clinic, the clinic, the clinic. You both
still want it, no?" she asked, looking from India to Ella.