Nancy shivered. Molly stepped closer, slipped her hand into the other girl’s. Jake smiled fiercely. He studied Molly, deliberately offensive, from head to toe. “Bit on the small side fer a big lad like you, Jack, ain’t she? ‘Ow do you manage? Use the kitchen table, do yer?”
More laughter. Molly felt her cheeks burn; Jack neither moved nor spoke.
“Well, look at that, will yer? Cat’s got ‘is tongue. Not like you, Jackie boy, not like you at all. Quick enough ter speak out when you’ve got yer gang at yer back, eh? Quick enough ter stick yer bleedin’ fingers into other people’s business, too. Well, you ain’t got so much to shout about now, Big Jack, ’ave yer? ’Ow dyer like yer sister, eh?” His voice dropped to a caressing murmur; “Shame really. Jumped the gun you ’ave. Another week’d ’ave done it nicely. Never mind, mustn’t be greedy. I’ve ’ad me fun.”
Jack stirred; the light glittered on the drops of moisture that had formed on his hair and skin. Jake’s thin, brigand’s face sharpened with pleasure as he watched him. He was tall as Jack, but slighter; his hair was long, straight, gypsy-black. He stood like a dancer, limned in light in the shifting mist. “End of the fuckin’ road, Jack Benton,” he said softly. “I’ve ’ad yer sister, and now I’ve got you. You won’t stand in Jake Aster’s way again—”
One of his companions pushed forward, a burly man who carried in his hand a long, shining knife. “Come on, Jake, cut the cackle. Get on with it.” He made a deft pass with the weapon, smiling widely. “I bin lookin’ forward to this fer a long time. You ain’t the only one with a grudge, you know. This sod got me thrown off the wharves.”
Jack shifted his weight slightly, ranging himself as best as he could before the two girls. Something caught Molly’s eye; she let go of Nancy’s hand and moved very carefully towards the railings beside the steps.
The man with the knife danced closer, light on his feet despite his bulk. Jake Aster watched, the wolf-smile on his lips. When another of his companions would have joined the advancing knife-wielder he held up a barring arm, shaking his head slightly. Jack watched the coming man intently. The man showed yellow teeth, cut a silver arc in the air inches from his intended victim’s face. The watching men murmured, laughing. The man moved again; Molly’s heart almost stopped as the knife, flickering in the lamplight, sliced the space where a second before Jack had been standing; so fast was Jack’s movement that it blurred the eye. The blade, shaken free from a suddenly helpless hand, flew into the air and Molly heard a nerve-grating crack as bone broke beneath Jack’s hands. The man he held shrieked, fell to his knees as he was released, clutching a grotesquely dangling arm. But he had served his purpose; the violence of Jack’s movement had taken him across the pavement and within reach of waiting hands. Jake Aster jerked his head and half a dozen men, two of them wielding heavy clubs, leapt forward and their weight bore Jack, fighting savagely, to the ground.
Molly reached for the broken railings.
Jack was hauled to his feet. Blood seeped from his cheekbone, his mouth, matted his thick hair. Distantly through the fog came the click of a horse’s hooves on the cobbles.
“Get that little ’un,” shouted Jake, just as the heavy railing came loose in Molly’s hand. She turned, swinging it like a flail, and more by luck than judgement caught the man who was advancing on her clean and hard across the chest. With a bellow of pain he backed away.
“Take ’er,” snapped Jake, his tone vicious. “Fer Christ’s sake, man, you goin’ ter let a bit of skirt stand you off?”
Jack stopped struggling. “Let her be, Jake. It’s me you’re after. I’m here. Let her alone.”
Molly, her back to the wall, swung the iron rail in a lethal swathe before her, watching her would-be attacker with wary and defiant eyes.
“Try it,” she said, “if ’tis a broken head you’re after.”
Jake threw back his head and laughed. “Irish, is it?” He walked to just beyond rail-swinging distance and regarded her with his head on one side. “Well, all right, Kitty-o, we’ll come to you later. It’ll be my pleasure.”
“Leave her!” Jack made one violent, wrenching attempt to free himself, then stood still, recognizing the futility of it, pinioned as he was by four men.
Jake walked to him, silent and balanced as a cat. “Shut up, Benton,” he said quietly, “no one’s askin’ you.” His hand crashed hard against Jack’s already damaged mouth.
Jack spat, very accurately, blood and spittle and a piece of tooth.
“Son of a bitch—” Jake’s arm was raised again; then Charley hit him, coming out of the foggy darkness like a thrown stone. Jack’s face split into a wide and bloody grin. Molly swung her iron bar and caught someone a satisfying crack on the back of the head before she grabbed for Nancy’s hand. The dark bulk of the hansom loomed beyond the light.
“’Ere, ’old on,” an aggrieved voice said from the driver’s box, “I ain’t ’avin’ no part in a rough ’ouse—”
Charley, using one opponent as a club to beat off another, swung closer to the cab and leapt onto the seat beside the cabby. “Won’t be a minute, mate,” he said, cheerfully, and above the tumult Jack’s voice rang like a bell.
“By God, if any bastard takes another step I’ll slit Aster’s bloody throat—”
In one hand he held the long, razor-sharp blade the burly man had dropped, in the other a huge handful of straight black hair, held excruciatingly close to the scalp. Jake Aster was nearly on his knees, his head drawn painfully back, his long throat open, defenceless, to the threat of the knife that no one there doubted that Jack would use.
“Tell them.” Jack jerked Jake’s head brutally. “Tell them, Jake.”
Jake in reply gave his captor an instruction from the gutter so explicit that Molly held her breath; the point of the knife drew blood from the stretched throat and Jack twisted his other hand until it seemed that Jake must choke. The effect was the required one: the men – two were already on the ground; the big man with the smashed arm was sitting on the curb cursing monotonously – gathered beneath the lamp post, none of them unscathed, none of them ready, in the face of the iced blaze of Jack’s eyes, to risk Jake Aster’s life; or their own.
“Get in the cab,” Jack said to Molly and Nancy. Molly nodded swiftly, pulling Nancy towards the vehicle. The bedspread had dropped from the girl’s shoulders and been trampled underfoot; she was shivering violently.
“’Ere, I don’t know abaht this—” the cabby half-stood in his seat.
Affably and with a hand like half the side of a barn Charley pushed him back. “Take it easy now, squire. There’ll be five bob in it for you.” The cabby opened his mouth to argue, looked at the breadth of Charley’s shoulders, the blithe grin, and changed his mind.
By his hair and the scruff of his neck Jack dragged Jake to the door of the cab.
“In,” he said.
Jake made no move. His eyes, contemptuous, were on the knife. “Sod you,” he said, “use it.”
The glinting blade lifted, the needle point held steady as a rock just an inch from his right eye. “Say that again, lad,” Jack said savagely, quietly. “It’ll be a pleasure.”
Nancy, in Molly’s arms in the cab, moaned a little and turned her head; her face was slick and shiny with tears that ran as if they would never stop.
Jake took a long, uneven breath. He had dealt with men enough to know true threat from bluff. Awkwardly he climbed into the cab.
“Tell your pack of hounds to stay put,” Jack said.
Jake lifted his voice. His eyes did not move from Jack’s face. If looks could kill, thought Molly, Jack would not have lasted one second. “Leave it, boys.”
The cab pulled away, rocking and bumping across the uneven surface of the street. Nancy was sobbing into Molly’s shoulder; Molly, her hand stroking the other girl’s hair soothingly, watched the two men on the seat opposite. Their hatred of each other was almost a tangible thing. It howled through their eyes, concentrated itself in the lethal g
leam of the knife Jack held. Neither spoke. Ten long minutes passed, Molly guessed, before Jack lifted a hand and rapped on the flap that communicated with the driver’s seat.
“All right, Charley. This’ll do.”
The vehicle rolled to a stop. Dense fog still drifted through silent streets. Almost all transport, it seemed, had finally been halted by the weather.
Jack leaned across and unlatched the door; it swung open. “Out,” he said to Jake, but the dark head stayed rigid, in his face the finality of death. He had no doubts as to what he would do in Jack’s place.
“What’s the matter, Benton,” he asked, “don’t you want the ladies to see the blood?”
“Don’t tempt me. Just get out of my sight.” There was a sick weariness in Jack’s voice, and Jake finally slid along the seat, watching all the while the knife in Jack’s hand. Then he was out and standing in the road.
“Shut the door,” Jack said tightly.
In a darkness lit only by the hansom’s own lamps Jake’s eyes shone venom through the closing door, and then Jack was calling to Charley. The cab lurched forward. Through the window Molly watched the slim, still figure as it receded into the murky darkness, then turned back to see Jack, with a gesture of disgust, toss the knife into the corner of the seat and lean his head back on the scuffed upholstery, his eyes closed. Up on the box Charley was talking cheerfully to the driver, encouraging him as he grumbled his way slowly through the shrouded streets. Within the confines of the cab’s interior there was nothing to be heard but Nancy’s quiet sobs until Jack at last sighed, as if waking, and turned his head to find wide grey eyes fixed upon him still.
He attempted a smile, a tired grimace. There was blood on his face. “Tha did a reet fine job there, lass,” he said, broadening his accent, “I’d wish ta ’ave thee at me back in all me fights.”
She could not smile back. “It isn’t over. Is it?”
“No,” he said simply. “It isn’t.”
They finished the journey in silence, to find that the shocks of that night were far from over.
Annie was at Sarah’s. Unable to wait alone she had, understandably, taken the tale to her mother-in-law and they had shared the vigil together. Annie it was who opened the door to them, whose eyes went not immediately to Nancy, but to Molly.
“Sam’s here,” she said. “He’s bad, Moll, real bad.”
“Sam?” Molly stared stupidly, as if she barely recognized the name.
“He came looking for you. He had to walk. The buses had stopped. With his chest, in this weather. He was taken bad—”
Molly was past her and into the back room before she could say more; Sam was propped in a chair, the colour of his face ghastly, the front of his shirt patched with blood, fresh stains on old, his cough the bark of death. He could not speak; there was nothing that Molly could do but take his hand and hold it tight.
The doctor who had been called to tend to Sam took one look at Nancy and ordered her upstairs to bed. When he came down from seeing her he spoke quietly to Sarah in the scullery before attending to Jack’s cuts and bruises. On his way out he asked Molly to accompany him to the front door. On the doorstep he turned.
“I’ve left instructions with Mrs Benton regarding your husband. The sooner he’s got to his own bed the better. What possessed him, Mrs Alden, to wander the streets on a night such as this I cannot imagine. He must, surely, know that he is a very sick man?”
Molly rubbed her forehead with a weary hand. “Shouldn’t he be in hospital then?”
“There is nothing,” the man said quietly, “that a hospital could do for him that his own bed wouldn’t do better. I repeat, I cannot think what he was doing on the streets tonight in such a condition.”
Molly’s mind had been slow to register not the words he had spoken but the emphasis in his voice. She lifted her head. “What do you mean? What condition?”
The doctor looked at her with eyes that had seen too much suffering to allow themselves to care deeply. “He is dying, Mrs Alden,” said the doctor. “Almost certainly, dying.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Poor Sam took a week to die. Dazed and unhappy, Molly nursed him through sleepless nights and endless, pain-filled days while Ellen watched her every movement with dark, venomous eyes. The impulse that had carried Sam out into the lethal foggy night, that had finally destroyed his damaged lungs, she blamed entirely upon Molly. Molly, at first, in exhausted anguish, was inclined to agree with her, until Sam himself, on the third day of his illness, gave her cause to think differently. He had lain, propped on his pillows, watching her as she tidied the room.
“M-Molly?” Every word he uttered was punctuated by the ugly rasp of his breathing. “C-can I ask you something?”
She came to the bedside. “Well, of course. What is it?”
Sam’s thin fingers were picking nervously at the counterpane, his bright-boned consumptive’s face turned suddenly from her.
“Sam?”
He took a deep, rattling breath. “Did Jack—” he coughed, recovered himself. “Did Jack c-come here sometimes? D-during the day, I mean? To see you?”
Silence sang between them. “Who told you such a thing?” No need, truly, to ask.
“M-mother m-mentioned that – he came here sometimes.” He lifted tired eyes to her face at last.
“Once he came. About Nancy. That’s all.” She could not keep the desperate anger from her voice.
He flinched. “O-of course. I’m sorry.” He was painfully flushed.
“Oh, Sam, dear—” She reached for his hand and held it tight. Now she saw how the canker had grown in him. Now she understood. He had come home to an empty house, Danny left with a neighbour, his wife gone, once more and with no explanation, to the Bentons. And in his mind the malicious, poisoned seeds planted by his mother. Had she realized, Molly wondered bitterly, that those seeds would kill the one she loved most in the world? “Jack’s your friend,” she said, “your true friend. You know that, don’t you?”
His face relaxed. “Of course.” He lay in silence for a moment, his cold hand still in hers. “Molly, will you get something for me? In the chest of drawers. The t-top drawer. The little s-statue. I’d like to have it here, where I can see it—”
She opened the drawer, lifted out the chipped and ugly statuette she had bought from the beggar-girl in Stratford – how long ago? Two years. A century. “You’ve still got this?”
“Put it on the table.” He was smiling. For the life of her Molly could not. “Th-thanks. I think I could sleep a little now.”
As, almost blindly, Molly left the room she almost walked into Ellen, standing at the door, openly listening. They stared at one another for one long, hate-filled moment before Molly pushed past Ellen and ran down the stairs.
Between that moment and the time when, in the early hours of the morning, Molly threw her coat over her shoulders and ran, terrified, for the doctor, the two women said not one word to each other. Sam drifted, and sank, and reached a hand desperately to Molly. She held it for hours, until her own was numb, willing her living strength into the frail, failing frame of the dying man, making impossible bargains with the saints and devils who peopled her mind. The baby was next door with the Johnsons; the house was itself deathlike, the atmosphere thick and silent. Ellen’s face was blank with grief and bitterness; and still she shed not one tear.
Molly for her part would not, could not, give up hope entirely; she refused to accept what was plainly before her eyes. The crisis would pass. It would.
But it didn’t, and as she fled down the silent street and pounded at the doctor’s door she knew it to be a wasted effort. As they climbed the stairs they could hear Sam’s voice, a stranger’s voice, strangled and harsh.
“Please, Mother. P-promise me—”
Molly pushed open the door. The pale, shadowed eyes moved to her, as did the dark and unforgiving ones of his mother.
“I’m sorry,” Sam said to Molly; his last words to anyone. A few mom
ents later, choking in blood, he was dead.
The rest of the night passed in a daze of unreality. The doctor was sympathetically efficient. Death and its attendant ceremonies was no stranger to him. He insisted upon administering to Ellen, after a rather worried look at her rigid, grieving face, a small draught to “calm her nerves”.
“It will help her sleep,” he said to Molly, “it might ease her a little. And now, young lady, what about you?” He had fetched Mrs Johnson from next door; the murmur of their voices as they tended Ellen filled the house at this strange hour with more life than it had held all day.
Molly shook her head. “No, thank you. I’m all right.”
“How long is it since you slept?”
She lifted a vague, impatient hand, “I’m – not sure.”
“Or ate?”
She shook her head.
The doctor tutted. “It won’t do, my dear. You’ve a child to consider, as well as yourself, you know. Life goes on. You may not believe it at the moment, but it does—” words he had obviously spoken – how many times? Kindly meant, totally meaningless. Molly looked past him into the darkness beyond his head, the sound of his voice lost before it reached her ears. Sam was dead. Quiet, kind Sam. She saw him as he had been on the day he had first opened the door to her – blushing, tongue-tied. She saw him, laughing, on Stratford Broadway in the glow of the Christmas lights. She felt sad, tired, worn out. But she knew in her heart that even in this Sam had lost; her grief for his death was not as it had been for Harry. And that saddened her more. Poor Sam. She refocussed her eyes upon the doctor’s face. He was holding something out to her.
“There’s a good girl. Drink it up.”
She took the glass obediently, drank a little. “Thank you.”
“I’ll be back in the morning. About eleven.”
She saw him to the door, stood for a moment leaning against the jamb, her head bowed, her mind an utter blank.
Upstairs quiet voices rose and fell; Ellen’s, occasionally strident, foremost of them. The hall swung a little, dizzily, around her. Her eyelids were lead. With the dregs of her strength finally draining from her she walked back into the sitting room and almost fell onto the chaise longue. Within seconds, with her head pillowed on her arms, she was asleep.
Molly Page 24
