The Winter Rose (7 page)

"Not as well as politics," Sid said to Frankie. "That's for sure."

"But that might be over-long for a headline, no?" Lytton said. "And
don't forget to mention all my good work with the SSOT. When will the
story run?"

"Day after tomorrow," McGrath said, folding the legs of the camera's tripod.

Frankie gave a low whistle. "A flipping camera no less, guv. If that
ain't taking liberties, I don't know what is." He was on McGrath in an
instant. He'd ripped the equipment out of his hands and thrown it out of
a window before the man knew what had happened. The sound of shattering
glass carrying up from the street told him.

"Jesus Christ!" McGrath cried. "That was a brand new camera!"

"Get out. Now. Or you're going out the window after it," Sid said.

McGrath, a big lad, rounded on Sid, ready to take a swing. His eyes
widened. He took a step back. "Bloody hell." He turned to Freddie
Lytton, ashen. "You never said he'd be here!" And then he was out the
door and gone, feet pounding down the stairs.

"Let's go, missus," Sid said to the doctor.

"Keep your hands off her!" Freddie Lytton ordered. "I should've known
you'd be behind this, Malone." He turned to the doctor and said,
"India, get Maud out of here now. I'm going to fetch the police and have
these men ar-rested and this place closed down."

Frankie burst into laughter. "Not bloody likely, mate. Teddy Ko pays the rozzers more money than he pays us."

"You can repeat that to the magistrate, Mr. Betts," Freddie said angrily. "I want that name ...Ko, was it?"

"Frankie..." Sid said through gritted teeth. His patience was wearing thin.

"Righto, guv." Frankie walked over to Lytton, grabbed him by the back
of his mackintosh, and marched him out of the room. Sid heard curses
and scuffles, a few thumps, and then a door banging back on its hinges.

"What are you doing to him? Leave him alone!" the doctor shrilled.

Sid smiled at her regretfully. "It's time to go, luv," he said.

"I'm not going anywhere."

"Don't let's have a scene now, miss," Sid said.

"It's Doctor, not luv. Not miss. Dr. India Selwyn Jones."

"India, dear, be quiet for once and listen," the dark-haired woman
said. "Do you have any idea who that is? It's Sid Malone. Surely you've
heard the name. Even you. Be the clever girl I know you are and walk out
of here now while you still can."

India leveled her chin at Sid. "I'm not afraid of you," she said.

"Nor should you be, Miss--Doctor Jones. I would never lay a hand on a
woman. Frankie and Tommy neither. Men... well, they're a different
matter. There's no telling what my lads will get up to with Mr. Lytton.
They don't call Frankie Mad Frank for nothing. He's a bit
unpredictable."

The doctor's eyes grew round. She bent down for her bag and jacket,
then said to the woman she'd called Maud, "You're destroying yourself."

"Oh, for God's sake, India, stop being such a bore. You never have any fun and you don't want anyone else to, either."

"Is addiction fun, Maud? Is syphilis?" She turned to Sid. "Not only
are you enslaving addicts, you're exploiting young women for financial
gain."

"We don't take prisoners here, Dr. Jones. If a girl's at Ko's, it's because she wants to be."

"Wants to be? You're telling me that she wants to be degraded? That she wants to expose herself to disease?"

"No, I'm telling you she wants to earn her rent money. It's warmer in Ko's than it is on the streets. And a damn sight safer."

The doctor shook her head. She looked as if she wanted to say
some-thing more, but she didn't. She put her jacket on and left. Sid
cast a last glance around the room; Ko was nowhere to be seen. He
followed the doc-tor down the stairs, simmering with anger.

She and her silly society were not a threat, but Lytton was. He
compli-cated things. When he got outside, he saw that Lytton and the
doctor were already halfway down the street. The rain had stopped.

"You know where he's going, don't you? And it won't be the local boys
he fetches this time. It'll be some big noise from the Yard," Frankie
said.

Sid nodded. He couldn't have that. Not yet. Teddy would need time to set the place to rights first.

"Oi! You two!" Sid shouted after them. Lytton turned around. Sid nodded to his carriage. "Get in."

Freddie took the doctor's arm and kept walking.

"Persuade them, lads," Sid said.

Frankie and Tom took off after them. There were words, another
scuffle, then Lytton and the doctor were walking back toward Sid. Lytton
helped the doctor into the carriage, then Tom climbed in and sat down
next to them. Frankie and Sid took facing seats.

"Whatever you're planning, Malone, you won't get away with it,"
Freddie said. "Dr. Jones comes from an important family and so do I.
There will be people looking for us."

"What the hell are you on about?" Frankie asked.

"The bollocks thinks we're kidnapping him," Sid said, rubbing his temples. "Where do you live, Dr. Jones?"

"Don't say a word, India. You don't want this man knowing your address," Freddie warned.

Sid took a deep breath and blew it out again. His head had started to
ache. "Either give me an address, in West London, or I'll drop you both
on the Ratcliff Highway." He didn't know if the doctor would recognize
the name, but he was certain Lytton would. The highway was the most
dangerous stretch of road in London, teeming with thieves, whores, and
cutthroats.

"Sloane Square," Lytton said.

"Chelsea, Ronnie," Sid yelled out of the window to his driver. "Make it quick."

The carriage lurched off. Sid noted with satisfaction that Lytton was
nursing a fat lip. He couldn't see the doctor's face; she was looking
at the floor. Her leather bag was on her lap; her hands were gripping
its handle. He saw that they trembled and he was sorry for it. He would
have happily popped Lytton in the gob himself, but he did not make a
habit of frightening women. She looked up just then. Her frank gray eyes
met his and held them and he saw to his surprise that she wasn't
frightened at all. She was angry. Furious, in fact.

"You're despicable," she said, her voice shaking with emotion. "You
trade in misery. You batten on people's despair. Do you know what drug
addiction can do? What it can drive people to? The people in those
rooms, they're spending their rent money on that poison."

"That's not my lookout, is it, Dr. Jones? I'm just a businessman.
Certainly isn't up to me to tell people how to spend their brass," Sid
said.

"Have you ever seen an opium addict when he can't get the drug?"
India continued. "He starts out shaking and sweating. Then the pain
starts."

"Being a little dramatic, aren't we, luv? From what I saw, a handful
of tossers was smoking themselves silly. Seemed pretty harmless to me."

"Those people were ruining themselves, Mr. Malone, body and soul.
Can't you see that? Can't you see that what you're doing is terribly,
terribly wrong?"

"India...," Freddie cautioned, his eyes darting nervously to Sid. But the doctor didn't hear him. Or she didn't care if she did.

She has bottle, Sid thought, I'll give her that.

"Come to London Hospital, Mr. Malone," she pressed. "I'll give you a
tour of the psychiatric ward. I'll show you what addiction does. I'll
show you how harmless it is."

"India, for God's sake, let it go," Freddie hissed. "You're not going to reform Sid Malone."

"And what makes you think that I, or any of Teddy's punters, want to
be reformed?" Sid asked. "Those dope fiends looked a damn sight happier
than you do, luv."

Frankie and Tom laughed. Freddie shot forward in his seat, a
threatening look on his face. Frankie pressed his fingers into Freddie's
chest and eased him back. Sid could see that Lytton was seething, and
that he prob-ably would have taken a shot at him had it not been for
Frankie. That took balls. As he watched him, he saw Freddie cover
India's hand with his own and squeeze it. Ah, that's it, he thought.
Nothing made a man stupider than being shown up in front of his girl.
Sid looked at the doctor with new inter-est, as if he'd somehow
forgotten in all the prior commotion that she was, in fact, a woman.

He could see how it might happen--the forgetting. She did little to
keep it fresh in a man's mind. Her hair wasn't styled; it was just
pulled back into a hasty twist. She might be pretty; it was hard to tell
with those awful glasses. Her clothes were awful, too. She wore a dark
skirt and waistcoat that completely hid whatever figure she might have,
and no jewelry except--he saw now--for a gold chain that ran across the
front of her waistcoat.

"... men will take bread from their children's mouths to get opium. Women will sell their bodies..."

Good Christ, he thought. She's still at it. He leaned forward and
tugged on the chain. A watch emerged from her waistcoat pocket. She gave
a little gasp.

"Very nice," he said, flipping it open.

"You wouldn't dare," Lytton said.

"What's a watch like this go for, Frankie?" Sid asked, ignoring him.

"Gold case, diamond markers ...I'd say a hundred quid, easy."

"A hundred quid," Sid said thoughtfully. "You know, that would feed
and clothe a docker's family for a year. Fine thing, isn't it, Frankie,
to tell other people what they should do when you're going home to a
fire in the grate and a nice hot meal and the poor bleeders at Ko's are
working fourteen-hour days in some hellhole of a factory, living five or
six in some shithole of a room, eating bread and marge three times a
day because it's all their rotten teeth can handle." India, still
glaring, blinked, but Sid did not. "Why, if it was me in their shoes,
Frankie," he added, "I'd smoke me fuckin' head off."

Sid returned the doctor's watch to her pocket. It was quiet then and
remained so for the rest of the ride. The carriage rolled westward,
hugging the river. He was relieved when he finally saw Westminster
Bridge and the Houses of Parliament. A few minutes later, Ronnie veered
north off the Grosvenor Road. Sid rapped for him to stop as they neared
the Pimlico Road, near Sloane Square. He'd decided to boot his
passengers out just shy of their destination in case the good doctor got
it in her head to make a farewell speech.

She did not disappoint him. "Mr. Malone, I must once again implore you..." she began, as the carriage slowed.

"Dr. Jones, it's been a pleasure," Sid said, opening the door before
the carriage had fully stopped. Freddie scrambled out, then took the
doctor's hand and helped her down. He was reaching back in for his coat
when Sid said, "Mr. Lytton, Dr. Jones, do not let me catch either of you
on Saracen Street again."

"You won't be seeing Dr. Jones there, but you'll be seeing me,"
Lytton warned. "You'll go down, Malone. Sooner or later. You'll make a
mistake. And when you do, I'll see that you're put in prison. You have
my word on that."

Sid's arm shot forward. His hand closed on Freddie's tie. He jerked
him into the carriage, using both hands to twist the fabric tight. No
one threatened him with prison. No one.

"Freddie?" he heard the doctor call. She was standing on the pavement and couldn't see inside the carriage.

"Let go!" Freddie wheezed, his fingers scrabbling at Malone's.

"Does the doctor care for you, mate?" Sid asked him.

"Take your filthy hands off me!" Each word was gasped.

"Answer me."

"Let go! Jesus..." His eyelids fluttered. He was going blue.

"Does she, Freddie?" Sid asked, tightening his grip.

"Y-yes!"

Sid released him. "Then for her sake, lad, don't come for me alone."

"Liverpool Street!" the conductor barked. India felt the train slow
as it neared the station. She hoped the doors would open quickly. It was
only 7:30 and already the underground was impossibly crowded. People
were mashed together and a horrible man in a bowler hat was making use
of every lurch and pitch to rub against her.

"Stop it or I shall call the guard," she hissed. He didn't and she
finally thought to put her doctor's bag between them. At last the train
stopped, the doors opened, and she was carried along in the surge of
people. She made her way up the stairs, bumped by briefcases and poked
by umbrellas, vowing to take the omnibus home.

Outside the station, a woman clutching a baby to her chest pressed a
dirty palm up at her. "Please, miss, a penny for the baby," she said,
her breath reeking of gin.

"There's a mission on the High Street. You can get soup there and
milk for the baby," India said, but the woman, hollow-eyed and
desperate, had already moved off. She saw her tug on the sleeve of a man
in a suit. He gave her a few coppers. India frowned. He'd meant well,
she knew, but he was only encouraging drunkenness.

"The Clarion! Getcher news 'ere! Read about the Chairman! King of
Crime! Only in the Clarion!" a newsboy cried on the pavement, waving the
morning edition at her. The Chairman. That's how Freddie had referred
to Sid Malone, India thought, shuddering at the memory of their meeting.
She briskly sidestepped the newsboy and his pile of papers, glancing at
the headline. "The New Underworld," it said. There was a sketch
underneath it. The artist had gotten the shape of the face right, but
not the eyes. They don't look like that, shifty and brutal, she thought.
His eyes were hard, but piercing and intelligent. They had unsettled
her. Far more than his violent reputation had. The memory of them
unsettled her now, so she put it out of her mind. She had more pressing
things to think about this morning.

She crossed Bishopsgate and headed for Middlesex Street, a busy
thor-oughfare that would take her to Whitechapel's High Street then to
Varden Street and Dr. Gifford's surgery, just south of the London
Hospital. She cut a crisp figure in her black straw hat, gray duster,
and white shirtwaist, all of which were several seasons out of date, but
freshly starched and pressed. Her pace was brisk and her expression
eager. It was her first day at Gifford's. She remembered how she'd
gotten the job--by agreeing to accept roughly half the salary a male
doctor was paid for nearly twice the hours--but even that memory
couldn't dampen her spirits. She was truly excited--excited to be a
practicing doctor at last, and excited to be practicing now, in 1900, at
what many said was the dawn of a golden age in medi-cine. The advances
of the last half century were astonishing, and India found their
implications for the future nothing short of mind-boggling.