by Alex Reeve
Rosie looked me straight in the eyes and, even under such a cloudy sky, hers were a bright apple-green. ‘You’re not thinking of taking care of those children yourself, are you?’
‘I haven’t made up my mind.’
I was surprised to hear the words emerge from my mouth. It was as if a hitherto unknown part of me had spoken.
‘Leo …’ She paused, rethinking what she had been going to say. ‘Are you sure about this? They’re a big responsibility, you know, kids. It’s like bits of your soul detaching themselves and walking around on their own. You’ll not get a minute ever again without being consumed by fear. And they’re not cheap. There’s clothes and food and God knows what else, and they break things all the time. And the boys smell. The girls too, but not so bad. And they never shut up, and when they do you worry they’re sick.’
‘Thank you for your understanding.’
‘Schoolbooks too, don’t forget those.’ She was ticking off the list on her fingers. ‘And pencils. It’s like a river of money streaming out of your purse. And the cooking is endless. It never stops. And you’ll need another room, under the circumstances. Would you truly leave Alfie’s place?’
I didn’t tell her that he’d already given me notice to leave.
‘Do you think I can’t manage?’
‘Of course you can!’ she insisted, with a little too much conviction. ‘You’re very … resourceful, I’m sure. It’s just that … don’t do this because you’re sad. Or lonely.’
‘I’m not lonely. Why does everyone keep saying I am?’
‘Aye, well, that is a question, isn’t it? Your young friend Constance said you never do anything or go anywhere. “Moping” was the word she used.’
‘Well, she’s wrong,’ I said firmly. ‘I go to work; I play chess with Jacob; I do lots of things. I went with Alfie to see his old army friends.’
‘That’s good,’ she said, though I could tell she was unconvinced. ‘Because children don’t salve your wounds, Leo, they rip the stitches out of them.’
I clenched my fingers together so tightly I thought my joints would crack.
‘Why should I be any less capable than anyone else? Is it because of …’ I lowered my voice, but by this time I was properly angry. ‘Of what I am?’
She folded her arms. ‘If what you are is a man, then most likely, yes. Look around you. How many men do you see caring for their own children, let alone someone else’s?’
My rage burned quickly through my better judgement. ‘If that’s the case, Rosie,’ I said, through gritted teeth, ‘why are you helping me with this? Who’s looking after your children while you’re here with me?’
She gasped as if she’d been struck, and for a moment I thought she would fly at me. Instead, she took a step away and composed herself, speaking with fierce precision.
‘So that’s it, is it? I’m to be here when you need me, like last year when it was your Maria and my Jack, but otherwise I should hurry back to my stove and my children with nary a complaint. And when they’re all grown up, what should I do then? Bake one final pie and fall down dead, because that’s all I’m good for?’
‘Rosie, I …’
‘You do what you want. You’ll be doing it on your own from now on.’
20
The following morning, I set off early for my father’s house.
Rosie’s objections had made up my mind.
Indeed, I had stayed awake half the night imagining myself teaching Ciara to read and listening to Aiden recite his times tables. I would settle them into their own bed every evening and wake them every morning. We would be a family. We would be my family. The more I thought about it, the righter it felt.
My one quandary was what they should call me. ‘Father’ sounded too close to my own upbringing, and it wasn’t true. ‘Leo’ would suffice. I knew where this indecision was coming from: a fear that my choice to care for them didn’t have a manly cause – to guide these two children and see them grow into fine young adults – but a maternal one – a desire to nurture them.
I found myself thinking about my father, resolving to be the opposite of him in every way. Yet, even in doing that, I was more like him than I wanted to admit. He had once told us that his own father, my grandfather, who had died when I was four years old, was a mild fellow, quick to trust and easily bidden. He confided this in a tone laced with scorn, as though we would see the obvious frailty of such a character. Perhaps each generation was destined to counter the last, zigging and zagging from tenderness to brutality and back to tenderness, each believing themselves to be distinct and yet, in truth, being the product of their upbringing as much as if they’d followed in their parents’ footsteps. It was a depressing thought, and yet, it seemed to me, we betray our intentions at every turn. My father had continued to keep my grandfather’s cane in the porch long after his death, insisting that a parishioner might one day have need of it. No one ever did.
I reached his house as the church bell was pounding out eleven o’clock.
All the shutters were closed. The door was opened by his housekeeper, who was accompanied by the smell of boiling meat and sherry.
Jane stood up when I came into the parlour. Her mouth was resolute, resisting any downward turn, but I could see the doubt and dread in her eyes. For that second, we were as we had once been, linked by some invisible thread more permanent, in its own way, than love: we were siblings. We had grown up in the same bedroom, read the same books, played the same games and shared the ribbons we tied our hair with. I used to be unable to sleep without hearing her breathing in the next bed. She could keep no secrets from me.
‘He had a bad night,’ she said, ‘but he’ll hang on for a while yet.’ She nodded firmly, agreeing with her own statement, willing it to be true. ‘He’s as stubborn as a donkey.’
‘You’re a good daughter,’ I said, and meant it. She had sacrificed her own well-being for our father, just as she had for Howard and her children.
She appeared to be on the verge of snapping a response, no doubt that I too could be a daughter to him, if I chose to be, but she thought better of it.
‘Those children are in the garden,’ she said. ‘Do you want to see him again first?’
‘No.’
‘He’s changed his will. He’s included you now.’
‘What?’
We were surrounded by his books and other oddments: binoculars, spectacles, a notebook, a copy of The Times from weeks ago, but I wanted nothing of his. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than spending money he’d given me or sitting on a chair that had once belonged to him.
She pulled a handwritten note from her bag. ‘He doesn’t have much. The house is owned by the church, but there’s some capital. Your share will amount to forty pounds or thereabouts. Not bad for someone who hasn’t seen him in years.’ I could tell she was making an effort to keep her voice steady. ‘It’s for Charlotte Pritchard, of course, so you’ll have to sign the paperwork as such. I’m sure, for forty pounds, you’ll find your way to doing that.’
I closed my eyes in exasperation. When we were children, she had often punched me, slapped me, kicked me and once elbowed me in the solar plexus. It was the way of siblings and didn’t bother me much at the time, but when I reached the age of thirteen and was her equal in strength and reach, I attempted to hit her back. She responded with a sneer, saying that fighting was infantile and foolish, and I should be capable of settling differences through reasoned argument – at which she happened still to be better than me.
I couldn’t win. But at that moment, I was tempted to get a modicum of revenge for all those bruises.
I would do no such thing, of course. I was a gentleman.
‘I won’t sign with that name because it isn’t mine. Did you really think I covet his money? You and Oliver can have it all.’
She considered the question, and it struck me that she might, in fact, be lying; his will might not include me at all. This could be her way of testing my resolv
e to remain a man.
She gave a brief and disinterested shrug. ‘I suppose you do have an income of your own, of a sort.’
I blanched at that. I had neglected to tell my foreman I would not be attending that day. I might be given the sack, and my chances of achieving another position would be slight indeed, without a reference. I had no savings and would be reliant on the charity of my friends for food and lodging within a week.
Of course, my mind strayed to the two hundred and four pounds tucked under my mattress, but I’d vowed that I would only spend it on the children’s behalf, never on mine. I would join the beggars on the bridge by the mill first.
I was feeling tired and strangely displaced, here with Jane, as if I might go upstairs to the room we had once shared at the vicarage and go to sleep in my old bed.
‘Jane, a photograph has come to light. It’s of John Thackery and Father and me … as I was in Enfield. You gave it to John, didn’t you?’
‘He came here to pay his respects and asked for a keepsake, and Father wanted him to have it. Where’s the harm?’
‘Don’t you understand? I’m not that person any more.’
She shrugged. ‘You are who God made you. You can cut your hair if you like, and wear a man’s clothes, but you’re Lottie Pritchard and you always will be. Unless you get married, of course.’ She smiled at this small irony, but I could see how angry she was, how much she was trying to hurt me.
And then I was sure.
‘You told John about me.’
She looked away. ‘I had no other choice. Father asked him if he knew where you were, and he became suspicious. Typical of the Thackerys, always thinking they’ve worked out something no one else knows. I truly thought he was going to accuse us of murdering you, so in the end I told him the truth on condition he kept it to himself.’
I didn’t have the words to express how I was feeling.
‘He blackmailed me,’ I managed, eventually. ‘Did you know that? He wanted me to tell the police I was with him when I wasn’t.’
She dismissed my protest with a wave. ‘I’m sure the whole thing was nonsense. He probably wanted to play at politics without his father finding out. They’re all terrified of the man, even Philippa.’
I was too incensed to think clearly. ‘Who on earth is Philippa?’
She looked up at the ceiling, astonished at my stupidity. ‘Philippa Thackery, his wife. Lady Thackery as she is now, I suppose. She wanted to stay in Enfield. She never wanted to go back to London and buy that cotton mill.’
‘Jute,’ I insisted obstinately, but she wasn’t listening.
‘It was the right decision for the business, though. Easier to get the cotton on and off the ships if you’re near the docks.’ I detected a note of envy in her voice. My sister was a woman of extraordinary intelligence who spent most of her time administering servants and attending social functions with her husband. ‘Anyway, I’m sure you’re mistaken. John Thackery meant no harm. It’s not the kind of man he is.’
‘But I am?’
‘You’re not any kind of man.’ She took a deep breath and rang the bell. The housekeeper appeared. ‘Bring the Hannigan children in, please.’
They were well enough dressed and each was carrying a drawstring sack. Ciara appeared brighter than the last time I’d seen her, and she took my hand and smiled at me. Aiden was serious and hard to fathom, but also rosy-cheeked. Whatever my sister’s failings – which were many and not always obvious – she would not see anyone under her roof suffer.
‘Hello, Mr Stanhope,’ Aiden said, as if we were two gentlemen met for dinner.
Jane presented each of them with a new pair of gloves, for which they thanked her very nicely.
I left the house without saying another word to her.
As we walked down the hill towards the station, I took Ciara’s sack and handed her a packet wrapped in waxed paper.
‘From the tooth mouse,’ I said.
It was a pastry from the shop on Regent’s Street, and she set upon it with relish, looking up at me with amazement at the first mouthful as though she had never imagined a thing so delicious.
Aiden seemed a touch peeved until I produced a pastry for him also.
‘What happens now?’ he asked.
‘You’re going to stay with me,’ I replied, feeling a pride the match of any new father’s. ‘For ever. We’re a family now.’
As we reached Little Pulteney Street, I was mentally listing all the things I still had to do. The top item was to find lodgings. I had contemplated taking a cab to King’s Cross Station and going far away, York or Edinburgh, with new names and new clothes. I could almost hear the words in my mouth and feel the itch of it in the soles of my feet: Come along, now. Hurry up!
We would never be found.
But how was that any different from what Sir Reginald had wanted to do? Either way, they would be lost, and their mother’s murder would go unsolved.
No, we would stay in London and find somewhere decent; nothing extravagant in case I truly had lost my position at the hospital, just a good-sized room for the two of them and a box room for me, with space for a bed and a shelf of books
After that, I would put the children’s money into a bank, talk to a lawyer about legal adoption and find a school for them.
And one other thing.
‘I want to buy a kite for us to fly in Hyde Park,’ I announced. ‘The three of us can take it in turns.’
Aiden grinned. It happened so rarely and yet it changed his face completely, transforming it from solemn and long to merry and round.
‘A kite? May we really? I’ve never flown a kite.’
Ted Boyd, who ran the grocery next door, was sitting by his upstairs window. He tapped on the glass and gave me a wave, and I returned the gesture, somewhat perplexed. He’d never been so friendly before.
He opened the window and called down to me: ‘You’re a credit to the area, Mr Stanhope. A proper credit.’
‘Thank you, Mr Boyd,’ I called back, puzzled, having no clue what he was talking about.
A police carriage was waiting in the street. Hooper climbed out, unfolding himself like a spider. Another policeman followed him, the same man I’d seen at their headquarters and the club. He was carrying a truncheon, letting it swing freely on the end of a leather strap.
As ever, I felt the urge to run. But I could not. I had responsibilities.
‘Mr Stanhope,’ Hooper called. ‘We’ve been waiting for you. We’d like a word about this.’ He waved a rolled-up newspaper in my direction, but then paused, frowning at the sight of Aiden and Ciara. ‘Why have you got them? We was told they was in an orphanage.’
I pulled them closer. ‘I’ve decided to adopt them myself. They’ll be safe with me.’
‘Are you mad?’ he sneered.
The constable took a step forwards, and Ciara huddled into my coat and looked up at me with wide eyes. I put my hand on her shoulder and felt her relax, comforted by my presence, and I was immediately overwhelmed. To have someone believe in you that much, rely on you that much, was like nothing I’d ever experienced.
And yet, I couldn’t think of a way out of this.
Aiden put down his sack and tugged urgently on my sleeve. Our eyes met, and I could see what he was thinking. I gave him the briefest of nods.
He slipped behind me and took his sister’s hand, and they ran.
‘Wait!’ shouted Hooper, but he was too late.
Aiden pulled his sister over the road and beneath the rails of a parked cart, dodging so fast between two old fellows they didn’t even notice.
They would have made it. They were so close. But Aiden didn’t know the area well and pulled Ciara into the alley by the butcher. He must have been hoping to lose his pursuers in the maze of streets in the northern part of Soho, but that alley was a dead end.
They were trapped.
The constable lumbered towards the entrance with the truncheon in his fist, followed by Hooper, who was breathin
g hard, his arms outstretched.
People had stopped to watch. One man caught my eye, and I recognised him. He was wearing a brown felt hat.
As the constable reached the entrance to the alleyway, a carriage drew up, partly blocking my view. Its door was flung open.
‘Get out of the way!’ Hooper bawled.
Aiden and Ciara hurtled back out of the alley and would have run straight into Hooper’s arms, but at that moment a loud bang came from inside the carriage, and Hooper flung himself backwards. I had never heard a gunshot before and it was a shockingly hard, short sound.
‘No!’ I shouted, but both children were unhurt, still on their feet.
Hooper leapt up and sprinted back towards me, keeping low, his face wild with terror. He wasn’t the only one. Another man started to run and then everyone was running, past me and around me. One fellow tripped and fell on to the pavement and continued on all fours.
Aiden had stopped, frozen in place. He was listening to someone in the carriage, and I could just see a gloved hand holding the pistol. He gave a tense nod and seemed about to get inside, but Ciara was hanging back. Aiden said something and then tugged her towards the open door. A hand extended from the carriage and pulled her in. He climbed in behind her, and the door slammed shut.
The driver shook the reins and the carriage drove away at speed.
The man in the brown felt hat raced after it, his coat billowing behind him, but it was too quick, turning the corner at Lexington Street and disappearing from view.
We were left staring dumbly at an empty road.
Hooper had been cowering in a doorway, and now he stood up straight, his face purple with rage.
‘Who the hell was that?’ he yelled.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I really don’t.’
He said something I couldn’t hear to the burly constable, who strode towards me. He punched me once on the side of my neck and I fell to my hands and knees. He bent down and punched me again, twice, and then his boot came down on my head, bouncing my skull off the stone.
