The Winter Rose

by Jennifer Donnelly

  "Aye, croquet. We played a lot of that in the East End. The cobbles make for a nice level playing field."

  "You must have done something."

  "I sat by the river," he finally said. "With me da. And me sister. Me da would name all the boats. Tell us who built them. Where they'd been. What they were carrying. He brought us things off them. Things he'd nicked when the foreman wasn't looking. A bit of tea. A nutmeg. Cinna-mon sticks."

  He kept talking, hoping his voice would cover the squeaking and scrab-bling. They were underfoot now. He was trying not to step directly on any of them, but it was impossible. There were so many. He thought that he must be walking directly through the largest rat colony in all of London and was glad of his heavy boots.

  "Oh, God, I can smell them," India said. "There must be dozens. Hundreds."

  Her arms tightened around his neck. He could feel her trembling. She leaned her head into his chest. He rested his cheek against it. "Almost there. Almost out," he said.

  And they were, though he didn't want to be. He wanted to stay like this, with the sweet weight of her in his arms, with her needing him. He wanted to keep walking with her, out of this unforgiving city, out of his unforgiving life. He wanted to walk all through the night, then sit with her somewhere radiant and beautiful in the morning. By the coast. At the water's edge. Where the stiff salt breeze would blow away the stench of his sins and the sea would wash him clean.

  It was a mad notion and he quickly shook it off, though he didn't put her down, not even when they were past the rats. He carried her all the way to the end of the passage, placed her back on her feet, then said, "Should be a door 'ere somewhere."

  He started to feel the walls, his hands searching for the way out. He'd had to find it blind before, when there had been no time for a lantern. He remembered that it was narrow and low. His fingers finally found a hollow, an opening dug into the dense London clay. He crouched down and crawled forward. His head knocked into something hard and curved--a wooden keg. He pushed it out of the way and light spilled into the passage. He felt for India and pulled her through.

  "Where are we?" she asked, blinking in the gaslight.

  "Cellar of the Blind Beggar. A pub on the Whitechapel Road," he an-swered, rolling the keg back into place. He turned back around, saw her forehead, and grimaced.

  "What is it?"

  He took out a handkerchief and touched it to her wound. It had opened up again and the cloth came away bloody. "Who doctors the doctor?" he asked quietly.

  "It's nothing," she said, taking the cloth and pressing it against her head.

  "You didn't answer my question."

  "The doctor doctors the doctor," she said wearily.

  "When's the last time you ate?" Sid asked. Her hands were still trembling. There were dark smudges under her eyes.

  "I don't know. Saturday morning, I think."

  It was now Sunday evening. "Come on upstairs. I'm buying you supper."

  "I couldn't. I've caused you enough trouble. I'll just find a cab--"

  "And pass out on the way home, making it a doddle for the driver to rob you blind. I think you should eat something before you go."

  She surrendered. "All right then, Dr. Malone. I will."

  They went upstairs. While India cleaned herself up as best she could, Sid found a table in the pub's snug and ordered a pint of porter and a Cum-berland mash, twice. India tried to decline the ale and order tea instead, but Sid wouldn't let her.

  "There's no goodness in it," he said. "Drink the porter."

  She was looking worse by the minute. He feared she might collapse if she didn't get some food. He'd chosen the table closest to the pub's hearth. A fire burned in it. It was twilight now and the evening had turned cool. He hoped the heat would do her good. Their drinks arrived. India sipped hers, then took several deep, hungry gulps. She put the glass down and looked around awkwardly. The intimacy they had shared in the darkness, the feeling of the words coming so easily, was gone and an uncomfortable silence had taken its place. She was the first to break it.

  "Thank you for the drink. And for bringing me here. It's good to sit."

  "Rough night?"

  "Very."

  "What happened?"

  India told him everything. When she finished, she said, "It was very odd. The four or five women who started it all, they didn't look like prostitutes. And I didn't see them again afterward. In jail, I mean. They weren't ar-rested."

  "Sounds like a staged job. Somebody wanted to break up the rally, maybe make the speakers look bad, so he paid someone to start trouble. Maybe the rozzers as well. Donaldson and his pack are as bent as a hairpin."

  "Who would do such a thing?"

  Sid gave her a look. He wondered how anyone so smart could be so stu-pid. "Who was the big draw, luv?" he asked.

  "Joseph Bristow. He's supposed to be running for the Tower Hamlets seat."

  "And who stands to gain if Bristow's made to look bad?"

  "I don't know."

  Sid rolled his eyes.

  "Who?" India asked.

  "Lord Freddie, maybe?"

  India recoiled. She shook her head vehemently. "Never! How can you even suggest it? Freddie is a gentleman. He would never stoop to such tactics."

  Sid held up his hands. "Sorry. My mistake. Must have been someone else."

  The barmaid delivered two plates. Each held a mountain of mashed po-tatoes doused in brown gravy and three fat sausages. India tucked in. Sid watched her, pleased. Just as he'd picked up his own fork, a woman came up to the table, dragging a child by the hand. The child was thin, her expression vacant. The woman's face was bloated. Her breath reeked of gin.

  "Spare something for the girl, please, Mr. Malone?" she begged.

  India was about to give the child her meal when Sid reached into his pocket and handed the woman some coins. When she realized he'd given her a whole pound, she grabbed his hand and kissed it.

  "Oi, Kitty! On your bike!" the barmaid shouted, rushing out from behind the bar. "Sorry, Mr. Malone."

  "No harm done," he said.

  India stabbed at her potatoes with her fork, then looked at Sid. "Why did you do that?" she asked. "You should have let me give them my meal. You're only encouraging drunkenness. She's going to run straight to the next pub and spend it on gin."

  "So what?"

  "So what? She shouldn't be drinking!"

  "Why not? What else has she got?"

  "A child, for starters."

  Sid shook his head. "Girl's a half-wit. Neither of them's going to last long, are they? Maybe the gin will give them a bit of warmth, a bit of comfort."

  "They'd be better off with milk. And porridge. And green vegetables."

  "Not a lot of comfort in broccoli."

  "No, but there's a lot of nourishment."

  There it was--the lecturing tone again. India, the woman he'd held in the tunnel, the soft, vulnerable, feeling woman, was gone. Dr. Jones was back.

  "Can you not understand the desire for comfort?" he asked her. "Have you never needed any yourself?"

  "If I have, I haven't sought it in a gin bottle. Or an opium pipe," she replied tartly.

  Sid shook his head. He regretted inviting her for supper now. It was al-ready going badly and they'd only just been served.

  "Don't you shake your head at me," she said hotly. "Look around your-self! At the men drinking their wages. Pint after pint after pint. They starve themselves to drink. And their wives and children, too. They'll go home from here--all of them--with only pennies in their pockets--"

  "For Christ's sake, leave it be," he said angrily. "You don't know what you're talking about! Have you ever put in a sixteen-hour day at the docks? Heaving coal or sides of beef in the cold and the rain till you'd thought you'd drop dead? Then gone home to the wife and five kids, all stuffed into one drafty room? Some of them sick, all of them hungry. You have any idea of the desperation in those rooms? Of the anger? Can you blame a man for wanting to forget it all for an
hour with a pint or two in a nice warm pub?"

  India sat back in her chair. "Have you always been this way, Sid? So willfully blind to what's right and what's wrong?"

  "Have you always been this way, India? Such a righteous bitch?"

  India looked as if he'd struck her. Her fork clattered to her plate. Sid stared at it--at the pile of mash, at the half-eaten sausages in a slick of gravy--then he picked it up and heaved it into the fire.

  "Have you gone utterly mad?" she hissed.

  "Still hungry?" he asked her.

  "Yes. As a matter of fact, I am. And you've just wasted--"

  "Tired?"

  "Yes, but I don't see..."

  "Sore?"

  "Quite."

  "Good. Welcome to the working class. Now get up."

  "What? Why? Where are we going?"

  "To meet your patients."

  Sid threw some money down, then hustled India up from the table. "Come on," he said, taking her arm.

  Out in the street, she shook him off violently. "I'm not going anywhere with you. I've met my patients, thank you. At Gifford's surgery. In the hospital."

  "Ever been in their homes?"

  "Of course I have! Where do you think I deliver their babies?"

  Sid gave a dismissive snort. "Bet they cleaned before you came. Bet the women got down on their hands and knees and scrubbed the floor, pains and all, knowing you were coming. Me mam did that. All the mams did. Didn't want the doctors and the midwives thinking they didn't keep a clean house. And here's another thing--"

  "I do not need to be told how to do my job. Not by you." India turned to-ward the street and held her hand up to hail a cab.

  "You're wrong about the porridge. Dead wrong," Sid said, trailing after her.

  "Good night, Mr. Malone."

  "You said your patients should eat porridge. You're wrong about that."

  India turned and stalked back to him, her eyes sparking anger. "No, ac-tually I'm right about that. I could empty half the hospitals in London if I could convince my patients to eat porridge and milk for breakfast instead of bread and tea."

  Sid was only inches away from India now, meeting her anger with his own. "Poor women can't cook porridge, don't you know that? Of course you don't. Because you don't know shit about the poor. Oh, you talk about them plenty. And you probably talk at them, too. But have you ever talked with them? I don't think so, because if you had you'd know that porridge has to be boiled. That takes coal, and coal costs money. And even if they could afford the expense, they still wouldn't eat porridge. Put it on any table in Whitechapel and it'll be thrown straight out the window. It's too much like skilly, the shit that's served in the spike. Ever been taken to a workhouse, India? Ever had your kids taken from you? Every last scrap of dignity stripped away? Think you'd ever want to eat what you'd been forced to eat there?"

  India didn't reply. She just waved her hand furiously at an approaching cab.

  "Ah, sod it. Why am I wasting my breath?" Sid reached into his pocket, then took her free hand and slapped some coins into it. "For the cab. Ta-ra." He strode off, then he stopped suddenly and spun around. "Do you want to be great?" he shouted at her back. There was no response. "India, do you?" Still no response. "You're a good doctor. Do you want to be a great one?"

  Slowly her hand came down. She turned to him. "You tell me why first."

  "Why what?"

  "Why you're trying to take me on some mad house call instead of robbing banks or cracking safes or whatever it is that you do with your evenings."

  "Because a bad man wants to do a good deed," he said, repeating what he'd overheard Ella say some weeks back in India's office.

  India looked embarrassed, but quickly recovered. "You shouldn't eaves-drop and you shouldn't be flippant."

  "I've never been more serious. They need you."

  "Who?"

  Sid spread his arms wide. "Them. All of them. All of the poor fucking blighters trying to stay alive in this poor fucking place."

  "You have a colossally foul mouth. Do you know that?" Her eyes nar-rowed. "I think you're drunk."

  "I wish. Are you coming?"

  "Not until you tell me why it matters to you."

  Sid didn't answer for a few seconds. When he did, his voice was low. "Because I had a family once. Here in Whitechapel. A mum. A brother. Two sisters. Me baby sister was ill. Consumption. We spent all we had trying to cure her. She had a bad turn one night and me mam went out to fetch a doctor. It was dark and late. She was killed, me mam. Murdered. On the street outside our door."

  "My God," India said.

  "They took our money--the so-called doctors--and did nothing. Nothing except shame me mam, telling her she wasn't taking proper care of the baby. Not feeding her right. Not keeping her away from the damp. Can you believe that? Keep her out of the damp? In fucking London?" He shook his head. "If we'd had a place we could have taken her, a good place, things might've been different. For her. For me mam..."

  "For you," India said softly.

  Sid looked away. She stared at him searchingly, then said, "Who are you, Sid?"

  "No one you want to know."

  "Missus! I've got better things to do than stop here all night. Do you want a cab or not?" the driver yelled.

  India looked at the driver. She bit her lip. "No, I don't. Sorry," she told him. She handed Sid back his money. "Come on, then," she said. "Let's go."

  India sat on the stone steps of Christ Church on Whitechapel's Com-mercial Street, staring into the darkness, clutching a half-empty bottle of porter. The church bells had just rung the hour--midnight. Sid sat next to her, holding a greasy paper containing two uneaten pork pies.

  "You all right?"

  "I will be."

  "It was too much. I shouldn't have done it."

  "I just need a minute."

  Four hours ago she had stepped out of the London she'd known and into another city entirely. She'd read Dante's Inferno once when she was a girl, and she'd felt this evening, as she had then, as if she'd descended into an abyss. As if each step she took along the narrow streets of Whitechapel brought her deeper into hell itself.

  Their first stop had been a lighterman's home--John Harris, a man Sid said he sometimes worked with. India had sat teetering on a three-legged chair in Maggie Harris's kitchen. She was careful to keep her feet together, to avoid stepping on the children sleeping under the table.

  "So how much is that total, Mags--between the piecework and John's wages?" Sid asked. He was leaning against a wall, arms crossed over his chest.

  "Round about a pound a week," Maggie answered, never taking her eyes from her work. She was gluing the outsides of matchboxes together. A boy and three girls sat with her at the table--they ranged in age from seven to twelve--gluing the insides.

  "For how many?"

  "There are ten of us. Me, the mister, five girls and three boys."

  "What do you get for the matchboxes alone, Mrs. Harris?" India asked.

  "Tuppence a gross."

  Two pennies for 144 matchboxes, she thought, blinking. Mrs. Harris and her children had to make one thousand four hundred and forty boxes to earn one shilling. She sneezed. The fumes from the glue were eye-watering. They made her dizzy. Or maybe it was the wobbly chair making her feel that way. Or maybe it was Sid. Being with him made her feel totally off balance, as if the ground were shifting under her.

  "Mam," the littlest girl whispered. "Mam, I'm tired." Her small, pinched face had no color in it except for the purplish circles under her eyes.

  "Just a few more, luv," Mrs. Harris said. "Here," she added, sliding a cracked cup across the table. It contained cold tea.

  India glanced at the battered clock on the kitchen mantel. It was ten thirty. The children should have been asleep hours ago.

  "What's the rent here?"

  "Twelve and six," Mrs. Harris said. Then she dutifully answered Sid's questions about the price of food and coal, and what she spent a week on both. Sid and India had kn
ocked on Maggie Harris's door ten minutes ago. Sid had introduced India and said she was going to open a clinic in Whitechapel and was conducting a health survey.

  "Crikey, not another one," Maggie Harris had sighed, ushering them in. "Had one of them do-gooders in just last week telling me to feed this lot bean soup. Bleedin' bean soup! They'd never be out of the jakes."

  "You ever feed them porridge or broccoli?" Sid asked, throwing India a look.