Tim Cratchit's Christmas Carol (11 page)

“Look here, Doctor,” he said. “We've made two wreaths, but haven't hung them yet. Didn't want the rain to wash the color out of the ribbons.”

Each pine wreath was adorned with sprigs of holly, a repeating pattern of red, white, and gold ribbons, and several lemons and oranges to add brightness. Tim guessed that each wreath was about three feet across, perfectly sized for each of the double front doors. Tim was admiring them when Bridget appeared to announce that dinner would be ready in a half hour.

“I hope you'll all dine with me tonight,” Tim said. “We need to talk about the party.”

When the invitation was put in those terms, the servants could not easily refuse. Nor did they really wish to; after Tim's trouble with the Langdons the previous day they felt that he might benefit from a gesture of support.

Once they were seated around the dining room table, their conversation focused first on the party. Bridget announced that she had begun receiving replies to the invitations, and it appeared that all of the prospective guests would attend.

“Did the Cromptons reply?” Tim inquired. “I know I asked you to send them an invitation, but I may have forgotten to mention that their daughter, Jane, will be acting as hostess this year.”

This unexpected bit of news caused eyebrows to rise around the table. Henry and Bridget shared a surprised look.

“Of course, Doctor,” Bridget said after a moment's hesitation to ensure that her voice conveyed no surprise. “The Cromptons still haven't replied to their invitation.” Pausing again, she continued, “I know that in the past you've always invited Dr. Eustace in person, but he never comes. Do you want me to send him a formal invitation this year? As a way of making amends?”

“What makes you think I've fallen from the doctor's good graces?” asked Tim.

“It seems a safe bet after that row with the Langdons,” Henry observed.

“You're quite the perceptive group,” Tim noted with a smile. “And you're absolutely right. But the doctor already rejected my personal invitation before this little incident, and it will take more than a written invitation to the party to satisfy Dr. Eustace now. So don't waste your time, Bridget.”

“I know it's not my place to say anything,” Bridget replied, “but I don't really care for that man.”

Tim found her comment amusing. He found her forthrightness appealing and sometimes wished that he could speak as freely.

“You're right, Bridget,” Tim conceded. “But unfortunately, the man is the senior partner in our practice. Really, he's my employer rather than my partner. As the three of you seem to have surmised, he paid me a visit today.

“After the Langdons left yesterday evening,” Tim continued, “they rushed directly to his house to complain. The old man told Eustace that I insulted his wife and that he was sassed by a scullery maid. We really made an impression.”

“Partners in crime,” William noted dryly.

“The nasty creature!” Bridget declared. “And Eustace took their part, I daresay!” She was about to say more, but Henry reached over and placed his hand over hers to calm her. A few moments later she rose from the table and began gathering the empty plates.

“Let's just say my partner wasn't happy with either of us. He has forbidden you from assisting me in the office, and he also ordered me not to treat any more poor people who might call on me there in the future.”

“How will that affect Ginny and Jonathan?” Henry asked, anxious to change the subject before Bridget's temper flared.

“I'm still going to try to help her son,” Tim said. “If I can't do it at the office, I'll do it here, or in hospital. But first we have to find her. Henry, I know it's getting late, but do you mind preparing the coach for a ride to the East End?”

“Not at all, Doctor.” Henry replied. “I'll go and harness the horses.”

“I'll help you,” said Bridget, who had just returned to the room to gather the silverware. “William will help me wash up the plates after you and the doctor leave.”

“I will?” asked William. Bridget gave him a stern look. “Right, I will,” he said with feigned exasperation.

In the carriage house, Henry cinched tight the harness on the dappled gray gelding and turned to Bridget. “I thought you might say something about us to the doctor at dinner, since he was in fairly good spirits.”

“I nearly did,” Bridget replied, “but with all that's gone on with Dr. Eustace and the Langdons, I was afraid his mood was fragile, and didn't want to upset him.”

“That's exactly what I was thinking,” the coachman said. “And he was so generous in complimenting us tonight, it was better not to hurt him by telling him that you'll be leaving his service when we marry.”

“Things may change and make it easier,” Bridget observed. “He surprised me when he mentioned that young lady.”

“I nearly choked on a mouthful of peas when he said it,” Henry agreed. “It would be good for him, providing that she's a good woman. Like the one I'm going to marry.”

Bridget blushed, her freckles turning a shade darker than her reddened cheeks.

Henry drove the carriage around to the front door, helped Bridget alight from her perch beside him, and opened the door for Tim, who had been waiting. The rain had stopped, and the night was not too cold.

“I'll ride up top with you,” Tim said, “and give directions. I don't know the addresses of a lot of the places we're going, but I can tell you how to get there.”

“It's going to be hard to find two people in that maze of streets, and such crowds,” Henry noted.

“Just about impossible,” Tim said. “I gave it some thought, and decided it wasn't even worth trying. We'd never manage it on our own. But I have another idea.”

During his years of treating London's poor, Tim explained to his coachman, he had come to know many people who were acquainted with a large number of the inhabitants in the impoverished districts. Often it was they who learned of someone in need of his services, and directed him to that person. Some were postmen, costermongers, shop and tavern keepers, midwives, even a few political agitators casting for support among the lower classes. By spreading the word among twenty or thirty of these people, and asking them to pass it along, Tim figured that within a day or two there would be hundreds of people looking for Ginny and Jonathan. Although he could also inform the constables, who knew the inhabitants of the neighborhoods where they patrolled, Tim was aware that Ginny didn't trust them, and so he had decided not to enlist their help.

As the brougham made its way through the crowded streets, Tim wondered how the people he planned to call upon would respond to his request for help. Would they still be willing to assist him, or would they feel that he had abandoned them for the riches of Harley Street and refuse?

Such fears were put to rest at Tim's first stop in Whitechapel. Spying a familiar costermonger, he asked Henry to stop. He was climbing down from the driver's bench when the vendor, who sold apples from a pushcart, shouted a greeting.

“Dr. Cratchit, I do believe!” the weathered man, well into middle age, called. “What a pleasure this is!” He wiped his right hand on his dirty apron and extended it to Tim. The doctor shook it gladly.

“Jack, still here, I see,” Tim said. “I'm happy to see you.” He hesitated a moment, groping for a memory. “How are Charlotte and the children?”

“You do remember,” said the impressed costermonger. “All quite well, thank you, Doctor. Little Catherine is growing up strong and bright as a new penny, thanks to you.”

“That's wonderful,” Tim replied. After a few minutes of catching up, Tim explained his errand. Jack promised to keep an eye out for Ginny, and to spread the word to his fellow vendors and anyone else who might be of help. Tim thanked him.

“My pleasure, Doctor,” Jack assured him. “You ought to come 'round more often. We all talks about you, and how we wishes we saw more of you. Merry Christmas!”

Tim met with similar responses from everyone else he called upon. Warm greetings, a chat about old times, a gentle chiding at his long absence, and sincere promises of assistance.

Henry, having overheard many of the conversations, ventured a comment as they drove home.

“These people love you, Doctor,” he said.

Tim nodded in acknowledgment. They do, he thought. Even though I've abandoned them for the past several years, they still do. They remember me. This realization brought him a measure of comfort. It also brought him a great deal of pain.

“I worried that they might have forgotten me,” Tim replied. “But I'm the one who's forgotten them.” The coachman turned, saw the sorrowful look on the doctor's face, and said nothing.

Chapter 10

G
inny had not gone far from the mission after she left on Sunday evening. The sidewalks were slippery with snow, and after walking about a quarter mile she decided not to risk a fall that might injure Jonathan. She found a bakery with a recessed doorway, where she sat and cradled her son in her arms. She wished that she had a blanket, but after swaddling Jonathan in the extra clothes that Bridget had bought for them, the best she could do was place her satchel in front of her: a pitiful barrier against the freezing night.

It was barely four o'clock in the morning when the baker arrived and rousted her from her shelter. She stuffed most of the clothing that had wrapped Jonathan back in the satchel and then, to keep warm, she walked about aimlessly in the gray predawn light, grateful that the boy still slept, yet worried by his frequent shivers. At last the sun came up, bringing a bit of warmth. With the five shillings she had reluctantly accepted from Bridget, she bought milk and cheese from a dairyman's cart. Jonathan ate as much as he wanted, which was very little, while she ate sparingly, not wishing to indulge when her resources were so scanty. She also bought a wool blanket at one of the shops she passed, and was pleased that the man at the counter treated her with politeness rather than the scorn to which she was accustomed. Evidently, he judged her by the quality of her new, if badly rumpled, frock.

Ginny pondered what she should do next. With only three shillings left, she would have to seek work, but she concluded that it was more important to find a room where Jonathan would be sheltered from the nighttime cold. She began threading her way through the streets toward the factory district.

An hour later, the changes in the air told Ginny that she was nearing her destination. The dirty, gray-brown haze that usually covered London grew thicker and dimmed the sun, and an occasional shift in the wind brought clouds of tiny black flakes swirling downward from unseen factory chimneys. Men in frayed clothing, who had been unable to find work that day, stood on the sidewalks in small clusters, sharing talk and sometimes a bottle of cheap gin. Ginny's level of alertness, conditioned by her hard-earned survival instincts, automatically rose. She kept to the outer edge of the sidewalk, away from the buildings, scanning the doorways ahead for lurkers and frequently turning her head to check behind her.

Approaching an alley to her left, Ginny noticed a young girl sitting languidly beneath the loading dock of a manufactory. As Ginny came nearer, the girl got up and moved quickly toward her.

“Spare a penny, m'lady?” the girl asked.

Ginny studied the girl, who seemed no older than twelve. She was very thin, her face dirty, her short brown hair unevenly cut and matted with grime. She wore a colorful outfit sewn from old burlap bags and lined with rags. Ginny was surprised to see the neat stitching that held the makeshift garments together. Half a dozen needles of various sizes, trailing different hues of thread, were stuck in a strip of burlap just below the girl's left shoulder.

“What's your name?” Ginny inquired.

“'Liz'beth, mum,” the girl answered. “Like the queen back in olden days. But I like to be called Lizzie. Now, about that penny.”

Ginny smiled at the girl's persistence, but was forced to admit that she had no money to spare.

“Yer kind is all like that,” the girl sneered. “You can spend a week's wages on a new frock, but not a copper for the likes o' me.” She turned and began walking back to her lair beneath the loading dock.

“Wait a minute!” Ginny called, and the girl spun around. “You're right, I do have a nice dress, but only because a friend bought it for me. So I don't want to hear anything about ‘your kind.' If you want the truth, I'm your kind. Except for one night at St. Luke's Mission, I've been sleeping in doorways for more than a year. Now come back, and I'll give you some cheese.”

“Sorry, mum,” Lizzie said, genuinely apologetic. “I don't never see folks like us dressed so nice. Maybe you oughter sell them clothes. You could eat for a week on what that frock would fetch.”

The talk about her clothes reminded Ginny that she needed to let Tim know what had happened. She decided to find him after she got a room, and see if he had learned anything that could help Jonathan. Meanwhile, she could not abandon Lizzie to the streets. A young girl like her could easily fall prey to a host of abuses.

“I've got a few shillings left and was going to get a room,” Ginny explained to Lizzie. “Why don't you come with me, and you can watch my son while I go out and find work. Then we can all sleep indoors for a change.”

“Do you have to work again?” Jonathan said sadly. “I like it better when you stay with me.”

“We'll be fine,” Lizzie told the boy. “I'll sing you my favorite songs.”

On their walk to the rooming house, Lizzie told Ginny her life's story with scarcely a pause for breath.

“Me mum and papa apprenticed me out to a seamstress when I was six,” Lizzie said. “I was hard used, but learned a lot, and was getting good at sewing and such. Then the mistress's business got slow, so she sent me back home.” Her eyes clouded with tears. “Mum had died, and Papa's new wife said they couldn't afford to keep me with them, and turned me out. That was near a month ago, and I've been living in that alley since. I knocked on some doors and offered to sew, but had 'em slammed smack back in my nose. So I begs, and sometimes get enough to buy a little food. I can't scrounge nothing from the trash to eat, the men and women fight each other over it, and I don't dare get near 'em. Is that how you got them marks on your face, fightin' for somethin' to eat?”

Ginny told Lizzie about being robbed, and had just finished when they arrived at the rooming house she had sought. It was a decrepit two-story building that had once been home to a factory owner. As the manufacturers prospered, they had moved to larger homes in the prestigious West End, renting their former homes to their employees. After years of poor maintenance had left the buildings nearly in ruins, the owners sold them for whatever they could get. This particular building had been purchased by Benny Phelps, a street tough who collected debts for a group of informal “bankers.” These men loaned money at usurious rates to financially pressed people who could never hope to borrow from a bank. When borrowers failed to pay, Benny Phelps called on them and convinced them, usually with his fists, to come up with the money. He received twenty percent of the amount he collected, and had hoarded his earnings to purchase the building. He had taken two of the downstairs rooms for his personal residence, and had divided the other two on that level and the four rooms upstairs into twelve small spaces, which he rented for a shilling and tuppence per night. The enterprising Phelps, who undoubtedly would have earned Mrs. Glastonbury's applause, had also divided the garret into four rooms, then gone on to scavenge odds and ends of lumber to construct a rickety shack in the backyard as a source of additional rental income.

Phelps did not waste time or money on repairs. The gray clapboards of the once neat building were warped and showed not a single trace of paint, many of the windows were broken, and a sloping mound of earth and chunks of brick had replaced the rotten front steps. The crumbling chimneys appeared ready to topple, and the roof was pocked with holes where shingles had come loose and the underlying wood had rotted through.

When Ginny, Lizzie, and Jonathan entered the building, they found Phelps seated behind an old table in the foyer. Despite his white hair and sixty years, he still looked like the brawler he had once been. He was broad-shouldered, with muscular arms and chest, and his face bore the marks of his former occupation. Although he had generally been the one to dole out beatings, occasionally a debtor had gotten in a few licks. Phelps's wide nose was flattened and bent to one side, while an array of scars from old cuts crisscrossed his cheeks, chin, and forehead. He squinted at the newcomers, then broke into a broad grin.

“Why, it's Ginny! I haven't seen you for ages—I was worried about what might have befallen you.”

“No, Benny, I've been fine,” Ginny said. “I just haven't been able to afford your rooms for a while. How are you?”

“Hard at work, as always,” Phelps replied. “Trying to make an honest living. Do you need a room? I can let you have space in the garret for ten pence a night.”

“No, thanks, Benny,” Ginny said. “We don't want to get soaked if it rains.”

“But then you won't have to go outside to the pump for water.” Phelps laughed.

After some negotiations, Ginny paid Phelps three shillings in advance for three nights in an upstairs room. Taking the key, she carried Jonathan up the shaky staircase while Lizzie brought the satchel. The room was barely an improvement over an alley or doorway. The single window had no glass and was partially boarded over. The three original walls were bare plaster, and the fourth, the divider Phelps had installed, had been made from salvaged wood scraps and testified to Phelps's absolute lack of carpentry skills. The room was unheated, and in one corner the worn floorboards were charred where a former tenant had built a fire.

Ginny left Jonathan with Lizzie, who seemed thrilled at the chance to take care of the child, and went in search of work. A lengthy trek brought her to a middle-class neighborhood that was home to shopkeepers, ships' officers, and some of the more skilled artisans. Perhaps because her new dress gave her a more respectable appearance, the mistress of the first house she called at hired her to do the laundry. She returned after dark, tired but with eight pence and a loaf of bread. She shared some of that and the leftover cheese with Jonathan and Lizzie, then huddled with them under the blanket and slept.

Ginny was up early the next morning. As usual, she checked her son to verify that he had survived the night, felt relieved to find him breathing. Reluctant to abandon the warm blanket for the cold drafts that blew into the room from between the few boards covering the window, she considered her situation. She needed to contact Dr. Cratchit, she knew. He would be wondering what had happened to her and Jonathan, perhaps even thinking that she was ungrateful for what he had done for her. Ginny could leave the few remaining coins with Lizzie and ask her to send the doctor a telegram. But she couldn't remember his office address, and didn't know the street or number of his home. She might be able to talk a cabbie into driving them to Harley Street, with the promise that Dr. Cratchit would pay the fare, to look for the doctor's office, which she was sure she would recognize. But even if she found a cabbie who was softhearted or gullible enough to help them, Ginny knew it would be unfair to Dr. Cratchit. Showing up at his office and sticking him with cab fare was no way to show gratitude for all that he had done for her and Jonathan.

Finally Ginny rose. Her body ached from lying on the wooden floor, and her joints were stiff. At least the night had been quiet. Whoever occupied the other rooms had not disturbed her sleep or the children's, a rarity in places like this, she thought. Ginny dusted off her frock, which she had carefully hung from a rusty nail that protruded from the wall, and was putting it on when Lizzie awoke. Ginny gave the girl the few coppers she had and instructed her to buy milk for herself and Jonathan, and to try to make the remnants of the loaf of bread last the day.

“Come straight back here after you get the milk,” Ginny said. “Benny will keep out anybody who might trouble you.” Lizzie promised that once her errand was completed, she would stay indoors and look after Jonathan. Shortly after Lizzie returned, Ginny set out to look for work, hoping to earn enough for cab fare to Harley Street. Lizzie waited until she thought the older girl was out of sight, gathered Jonathan in her arms, and then left the house.

“Mom said not to go out,” Jonathan reminded Lizzie when he realized what she was doing.

“I'm going to help your mom,” Lizzie reassured him. “I'll find some sewing work that I can do in the room, and we'll come right back.”

It was a cool morning, with thick clouds overhead that darkened the sky and promised rain. Picking her way around the heaps of snow and refuse that littered the streets, Lizzie made her way to a residential area where she had found customers in the past. With his usual forbearance, Jonathan gave her no trouble, but after she had covered the first mile, his light weight seemed to increase with every step Lizzie took. She stopped occasionally to rest, sitting on dry patches of sidewalk with the child in her lap while she rubbed her aching arms. She began to question the wisdom of her decision, although she figured that she had gone too far to turn back.

“Need any sewing, mum?” she asked the woman at the first door that opened to her knock once she had reached a street of decaying homes.

“No,” was the curt reply, one that was repeated at the next several houses that Lizzie called at. People must be saving their money for Christmas, she thought.