“Are you feeling unwell, Miss O’Dowd?”
She cleared a throat which over the past few hours had become painful to the point of closing.
“A little.”
The kindly glance took in the hectic colour, the fever-bright, heavy-lidded eyes. “You should not have come out today with the weather as it is. I think you should ask Mr Jenkins’ permission to leave early. I can finish up here alone—”
Molly opened her mouth to protest, but subsided without speaking. She felt awful. Her joints were stiff, her skin dry and sore. The thought of bed, of warmth and quiet and darkness, was a vision of heaven.
She made her way to Mr Jenkins’ door and knocked.
There was, as always, a small, significant pause before the quiet voice said, “Come.”
He looked up as she entered, his eyes questioning. “Yes?”
“I’m sorry to bother you, Mr Jenkins.” Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat painfully. “I’m afraid I’m feeling very unwell. Mr Vassal suggested that you might allow me to go home.”
The eyes raked her, turned back to the pile of papers on his desk. “Did he indeed?”
She bit her lip, detesting equally him and the weakness that had brought her here.
Owen Jenkins picked up a pen, made a small mark alongside a column of figures, then looked back at her. “You presumably felt well enough to come to work this morning?” The question was coolly polite.
“Yes.” Her answer was neither; anger and resentment boiled in the one word.
He raised sardonic eyebrows. “It has always been my contention that women make more of such matters than do men. I suggest, Miss O’Dowd, that you go back to your work. Tomorrow is Saturday. If you are still – unwell – then I suppose you may take the morning off.” He returned to his work, the interview, such as it was, at an end.
Molly passed the rest of the day in a haze of discomfort and pain. Her throat grew worse; it was painful to swallow or to speak, impossible to eat. Her head throbbed viciously; her chest hurt when she drew breath. Mr Vassal watched her struggle until five o’clock before saying with a vehemence totally unlike his usually indecisive tone, “That is enough, Molly. Home, at once. I insist.”
She seemed only barely to grasp what he was saying.
“But—”
“But nothing. Off with you. And don’t come back until you’re better. If Mr Jenkins wants to know where you are I’ll tell him. Now off you go.”
The bitter air hit her like a physical blow; flakes of snow whirled in dizzying dance past her unfocussed eyes. She plodded down the dark street in the direction of the station, hardly knowing how to put one foot before the other, her teeth clenched against the hammer-blows of pain that shattered her head at every step. She leaned for a moment in a doorway, gasping for breath. Her chest felt as if a slowly constricting band of iron had been forged around it. For a frightening minute the dark world was bright as brilliant flashes of colour lit her mind and her body flushed with fever. Then she was back in an unbearable misery of cold and darkness, shivering, with the station, the train and home seeming limitless miles away. She felt tears rising, forced them down, something like panic moving in her. Part of her mind was still clear enough to know that she was ill. Really ill. She must get home. The Aldens would get a doctor. She would be safe if she could just get to Linsey Grove…
She struggled on, turned blindly into Bishopsgate. There she had to stop again, leaning against a wall, fighting with desperation to regain her breath. The wind gusted, invincibly cold and laden with stinging pellets of ice. She knew beyond doubt that she could not make it as far as the station. As she stood there a horse-drawn omnibus drew up beside her. The open, wind-whipped roof was empty, the lit interior looked crowded, but not to capacity. The windows were steamed against the cold, the yellow glow of the lamps a pool of comparative comfort in a comfortless world. “—West Ham, Plaistow, Upton Park Station, East Ham Town Hall—” the conductor called as the car came to a halt.
She could not move another step. Thankfully she stumbled onto the bus and sank onto a seat, out of the wind at last.
“How close do you go to Linsey Grove, Upton Park?”
The man shook his head. “No idea, luv. Never ’eard of it. Upton Park Station do you?”
She nodded, paid for her ticket. As she laid her burning face to the cold, running-wet glass of the window the world tilted and swayed wildly around her. Her skin felt as if it had been burned, every nerve-end raw; it was all she could do to breathe. She set herself to survive the nightmare. The vehicle jogged and jolted, stopped and started, time contracted, expanded, spun in frightening circles inside her head…
She jumped awake, panic-stricken at the conductor’s call; she had missed her stop. No she hadn’t, she was here; this was it. She came to her feet like a sleepwalker and pushed with the other passengers along the body of the bus and out onto the street.
By the time she realized that the freezing, sleet-blasted street was totally strange to her it was too late – the omnibus had gone, and she was alone.
* * *
Jack and Charley Benton strode, heads down into the wind, broad shoulders hunched to their ears, towards home and a good hot supper. They were both big men, hardly an inch between them for height, Jack perhaps the stockier of the two. They walked fast and easily, hands in pockets, caps well down over their eyes. It was Charley who almost fell over the small figure that stumbled from the shadow of a high wall obliquely across his path.
“Hell’s bells. What’s this?” He regained his balance easily; the girl with whom he had collided staggered away from him and grabbed at a lamp post to stop herself from falling. She clung to the post muttering, her odd, silvered eyes gleaming in the light.
“Drunk? By God, she’s drunk!” Charley laughed, preparing to step past her and go on his way. “Tight as ninepence! Can’t say I blame her, mind. One way to keep the cold out—”
“Wait.” Jack put a restraining hand on his arm. “I’m not so sure she is drunk.”
He stepped forward. The girl hardly seemed aware of him. Her eyes were upon him, but with no focus; burning with fever they looked through and beyond him, dazed and frightened. Her face was peony bright, the sockets of the light, feverish eyes bruised and shadowed. She was trembling violently.
“The lass is ill.”
As if in confirmation of his words she coughed, but Molly neither saw them nor heard them. Her head was a mass of raging pain, her throat raw and swollen against her ragged breath. She coughed again, convulsively, and as she doubled under the tearing force of it had to let go of the post. Suddenly, uncaringly, she pitched into darkness.
* * *
She came from a cave of confusion into gentle, quiet light; the light of a glowing fire in a twilit room. She felt incredibly frail, shatteringly weak, almost as if her body no longer existed, as if only nerve remained to awake. She knew this room; she had seen it before, through a blaze of fever, when a tall man with an impatient voice had forced something sharp and painful into her mouth, had felt her wrist and her back and the hard cage beneath her breast with cold, efficient fingers. The bitter taste of medicine was still in her mouth. She had seen this room too, night-shadowed, though never in total darkness; always there had been the faint glow of the fire, the tiny flame of a night-light on the table. And always on those dark occasions she had been aware of a reassuring presence; never had she been left to fend off her fears alone, always there had been a warm, motherly strength that had tethered her firmly when, after the fever, the chill weightlessness of her body had tempted her to drift away. A warm strong hand had held her then, prevented her from slipping into the peaceful dark. There were faces, she thought, that belonged to this room, but she could not for the moment bring them to mind. It didn’t matter. She was happy to lie, unmoving, half-asleep. She could hear voices from beyond the door, hushed talk, quiet laughter, the subdued clatter of living. As with the room, the voices, with their slight, strange accent, ha
d a familiarity; they too belonged to that odd, timeless emptiness that seemed to have taken some part of her life. Where was she? How had she got here? She had not the slightest idea, nor could she bring herself greatly to care. She was warm, comfortable and safe; and she could feel within herself the first stirrings of returning life. That was enough. And with a deep, sighing breath she fell back to sleep again.
When next she opened her eyes the fireside chair was occupied; a girl sat, straight-backed, her smooth head bent over a complicated spider’s web of crochet, the hook slipping through the threads with delicate and practised speed, slender, bony hands flying in constant motion. Despite the long, soft, brown hair that was coiled in a tidy bun on the nape of her neck there was a look of boyishness about the figure; her face was spareboned and serious, her body not soft nor rounded but athletically slim and straight. Molly watched her from beneath lowered lashes, struck by the grace of the sloping shoulders, the bent head. Then she became aware of someone else; a young man was seated on the floor on the far side of the chair. Molly could only see the top of a head of brown-blond hair and one strong narrow hand, undoubtedly male, flung across the girl’s knee. As she watched the hand reached for the yarn and tweaked it, teasing; the girl slapped the hand away hard, though she smiled indulgently.
“Nuisance! Haven’t you got anything better to do? Go and find someone else to pester—” The broad vowels and stressed syllables had no origin in London; they were northern, Molly guessed, though she could not place the accent exactly. Neither of the two by the fire had noticed that she was awake.
The young man stretched and came to his knees, his face towards Molly. Her half-closed lashes flickered and lifted as the shadowed light moved on a sharp-cut, smiling mouth, sparked blue in the clear-arched, heavy-lashed eyes. His hair was the colour of dark honey, thick and feathered like a child’s; his skin was brown and smooth over strong, fine bones. Beside him the girl looked ordinary, almost plain. He had an arm across her shoulders, coaxing, and was about to speak when his eyes strayed above her head to Molly’s corner and he paused.
“Well I’ll be – our sleeping beauty’s back with us from the look of it—” echoes of the north in his voice too.
The girl in the chair turned sharply. When her eyes met Molly’s her face lit with a smile and she laid down her work.
“Go fetch Mam, Harry.”
She came to Molly still smiling, a little shy, her brown eyes searching the wan face.
“Hello. Are you feeling better?”
Molly moved her head on the pillow. “Yes. Thank you—”
The girl held up an admonishing finger. “Lie still, now, Doctor Adams said you’d be very weak when you woke. Harry! I asked you to go and tell Mam.”
Harry was standing at the foot of the couch, his head on one side, his smooth-chiselled features alight with sympathetic interest. He was undoubtedly the most beautiful person Molly had ever seen.
“Harry!”
“I’m going.” His voice was slightly husky, pleasant to the ear. With a swift grin he turned and left the room.
The brown-haired girl perched on the edge of the couch beside Molly. “I’m Nancy Benton. That was my brother Harry. Do you remember anything? Do you know where you are?”
Molly shook her head helplessly.
“You’re in our house in West Ham. Jack and Charley; they’re my brothers, too—” her smile widened, “—we’ve a houseful of men – found you wandering in the street. You were very ill. We were afraid—” she stopped. “Are you certain you feel better?”
“Truly I do. I’m sorry. I must have put you to a lot of trouble.” Molly was warmed by the girl’s obviously sincere concern, by the look in the kind dark eyes. “How long have I been here?”
“Since late last Friday. It’s Wednesday evening now—”
“Five days!” Molly struggled to sit up, all her languor falling from her. Her job! Her room! The movement started her coughing, and she was horrified to discover that she had not the strength even to lift herself to her elbows. She dropped weakly back into the pillows, her eyes filling with tears.
“Oh please don’t. Don’t cry. You mustn’t upset yourself—” The girl clasped her hand in a firm warm grip, “—you must rest The doctor said so. You’re not to fret.”
“Well, well. What’s this then?” Another voice, very like Nancy’s but with the accent stronger. Molly remembered this voice from the far reaches of a painful night, her hand, too, recognized the firm, roughened touch that took the place of Nancy’s. This was the strength that had held her when her own had been vanquished, this the will that had supported hers in the battle against peaceful, tempting darkness. The eyes were darker than Nancy’s, almost black, and the face marked with the years and with hardship; but in line and feature and lift of bone here was the beauty she had just seen in Harry, but tempered by time and without the arrogance of the young man’s face.
“Tears now?” A work-hardened hand brushed gently the damp curls from Molly’s forehead; Sarah Benton smiled at the frail girl whom she had watched over as she would have one of her own, whom she had coddled from the moment Jack had carried her, a helpless, failing child, into the house. “Harry said that you were feeling better?”
Molly, disgusted at her helplessness, simply could not stop the tears of weakness that rolled down her face. “I am,” she whispered, sniffing. “Yes, I am.” She blinked, ashamed of the silly tears, aware of their eyes upon her. “My name’s Molly,” she added more calmly. “Molly O’Dowd.”
Harry leaned over the back of the couch, his face solemn. “How do, Molly O’Dowd. Pleased to meet you.” His eyes were warm and glittered like the summer sea in sunshine. “Welcome back to the land of the living. Once or twice there we thought we’d lost you. When our Jack brought you in you looked like a drowned kitten—”
She managed a watery counterfeit of a smile. “I really must get up. There are things I must do. I have to contact the office. Please—”
“Later.” Sarah held up an authoritative hand as Molly opened her mouth to protest “Anything that needs doing the lads’ll do for you. And the first thing is to contact your family, they must be going wild with worry. If you’ll tell us your address Jack’ll—” she stopped. Molly was shaking her head, the tears still running, sideways, into her hair.
“I don’t have any family.”
Nancy looked truly shocked. “None at all?”
“Not here. Not in London.” Too much to try to explain.
“Is there someone else we should get in touch with?”
She gave them both Richmond’s and the Aldens’ address; the irrational panic was still churning in her stomach. “I must owe a week’s rent if I didn’t get home on Friday night.” The tear-drenched eyes were huge in a face that had thinned pathetically.
“Our Jack’ll see to it for you. Don’t worry about it. I doubt they’ve put your things into the street just yet.” Sarah Benton patted and smoothed the pillows.
Molly managed another wobbly smile. “I wouldn’t be too sure of that.”
“Well if they have,” Harry was grinning from ear to ear, “I expect our Jack’ll see to that too.”
Somewhere in the house a door slammed and a child’s treble called, “Mam? Mam!”
“That’s our kid.” Nancy stood up, smoothing her skirts, “It’s all right, Mam, I’ll see to him. I’ll come and see you later if you like?” she said, smiling at Molly.
“Yes, please.” Looking into the smiling, boyish face a feeling of happy warmth washed over Molly; a family, a home, and herself for however short a time part of it. The tears had stopped. She touched Sarah’s hand. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
“You can thank us by being a good lass and doing as you’re told so that you get better. We don’t want all our trouble for nothing, do we? Now—” Sarah said, standing up briskly “—something to eat, I think. Out you go, Harry, leave the lass in peace. She needs to rest.”
Later Nancy came back to
sit with her, bringing her crochet work, pulling her chair up next to the couch. Neither of them said much; Molly lay drowsily on her pillows, happy simply to have the other girl’s company. Sometimes when she opened her eyes she found Nancy watching her. They smiled as their eyes met and friendship grew quietly as a flower in the tranquil room.
About an hour after Nancy had joined her she heard an outer door bang, the sound of booted feet and men’s voices, swiftly hushed.
Nancy lifted her head. “Jack and Charley,” she said, “They’ll be glad to know you’re feeling better.”
“They were the ones who found me?”
Nancy bit through a strand of yarn with sharp teeth. “Mmm. They were on their way home from work – they work together in the docks. You walked right into them, I think.”
“I don’t remember.”
“I’m not surprised. You were in a terrible state.”
They fell silent for a moment listening to the noises in the room next door, then Molly asked, suddenly shy, “Do you have any more brothers that I don’t know about?”
“Lord, no.” Nancy smiled Harry’s wide, unself conscious smile. “Thank goodness. The ones you’ve heard about are quite enough, believe me. Jack’s the eldest – he’s been sort of head of the family since Dad died five years ago – then there’s Charley who’s—” she thought for a moment “—twenty-three in a few weeks’ time. Then there’s Harry, you met him earlier, he’s twenty-one, then me, then our kid, Edward. He’s a lot younger, not six yet. He was born just before we came to London—” It seemed to Molly that something in her tone had changed, but before she could recognize the new note in Nancy’s voice there was a rap on the door.
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