by Mary Gibson
‘And that was yesterday? Have you heard anything from Nora?’
‘No, have you?’
‘No.’
‘Aunt Violet told me she’d make arrangements to get her out of Chibby’s house. Let’s hope it’s soon.’
Kate had no fear for herself, but Nora was still wrapped in gossamer, trapped at the heart of her father’s web, and she had a feeling she wouldn’t be let go as easily as Kate.
Their conversation was cut short as they arrived at Martin’s mother’s house, an imposing four-storey in Kensington protected by its own set of wrought-iron gates. Martin pulled up the brake and put his hand over hers. ‘Ready to enter the lioness’s den?’
Kate blew out a long breath and smiled at him. ‘If you’d lived with Aunt Sylvie most of your life you’d think your mother was a cuddly kitten. Come on, let’s not keep the old gel waiting.’
As he pushed open the gates, he said, ‘Now, you won’t overdo the cockney Doolittle act, will you?’
Kate giggled. ‘Don’t you want me to have any fun tonight?’
He put an arm around her. He looked very elegant, in his black dinner suit and patent shoes, but she decided she definitely preferred him in a paint-spattered artist’s smock.
His mother proved herself a terror. She’d obviously set out to intimidate Kate and dissuade her from marrying her only son. Her greeting was as steely as her hair, which looked like a polished helmet. Her clever eyes fixed Kate with a sharp attention and never left her all evening. Olivia, Martin’s younger sister, and her husband had been invited along to oil the wheels. Fortunately, Olivia was as open and friendly as Martin, who’d made sure that Kate was seated between his sister and himself. The purpose of the evening was obvious to all. Kate was on show and she felt an almost reckless eagerness to see how quickly Mrs North could be brought to the point of forbidding her son’s marriage to Kate. If Martin hadn’t already had his allowance cut off for the lesser crime of actually courting her, she would have felt far more responsibility to pretend to be something she wasn’t, but now, she was determined that they could take her or leave her.
She’d worn the black dress Nora had bought her for the bookshop dance. It was an outfit which made her feel as if she could take on the world – and Martin’s mother – with ease. She noticed, as they were shown in, Olivia’s look of approval and her sidelong glance at Mrs North, who gave her a stony smile in return.
When they were seated at the dinner table and the soup had been served, Mrs North started on her offensive.
‘It’s very nice to have this opportunity to get to know Martin’s “Eliza” a little better.’ Her smile was lethal. ‘I hear you’ve been benefiting from my sister’s elocution lessons!’
Martin’s face froze in horror. Perhaps Mrs North thought she would strike Kate dumb, or that she wouldn’t understand the reference. Instead she gave a sweet smile back.
‘Yes! Isn’t it a wonderful play? I loved the lecture G. B. S. gave at the bookshop, he was so entertaining. Ethel introduced us afterwards and I had a lovely chat with him about all the things he’d got wrong with Eliza’s accent! And when I told him that she should have said “not bleedin’ likely” rather than “not bloody likely”, he took out his notebook and made a note of it!’
Kate gave Mrs North a wide-eyed smile and saw Olivia dip her head, stifling a laugh in her napkin. Mrs North fixed Kate with a look that would have frozen the soup. She felt Martin grasp her hand beneath the table and squeezed encouragingly. ‘Actually, Kate was a real hit with the old chap,’ he said, ‘and Ethel appointed her voice coach when the bookshop drama group staged Pygmalion.’
She loved that Martin was so innocently proud of her, but Mrs North knew when she was being mocked. She attempted to out-stare Kate and, failing miserably, asked for the soup to be taken away instead. Towards the end of the meal, Martin tugged on his collar, loosened his tie and coughed several times. ‘Mother, I’ve invited Kate tonight because I have an announcement.’ He gave a forced smile. ‘We are engaged to be married, and I would like your blessing.’
Olivia clapped and said, ‘Oh, Martin, that’s marvellous.’ Her husband looked frightened and glanced at Mrs North, who flushed deeply. She turned to Kate. ‘I’m sure you are a very lovely young woman, Kate, and I can see why my son is smitten, but he has not been kind in promising you marriage, nor in bringing you here. He knows my views on marriage between the classes, and now he’s forced me to embarrass you.’
She turned her eyes on Martin, who gripped Kate’s hand again, even more tightly. ‘And as for you, if you insist on dragging the family down by marrying someone brought up in degradation and squalor, then you’ll get not a penny from me. It will all go to your sister!’
Martin’s brother-in-law stopped looking frightened and began nodding in agreement, until his wife spoilt the moment by exclaiming, ‘But that’s so cruel!’
Martin stood up, pulling Kate with him. ‘Mother, I’m not interested in your money. Olivia’s welcome to it. I came here for your blessing. That’s all. Come along, Kate. I apologize for my mother’s rudeness. Shall we sling our ’ooks?’
They ran hand in hand from the house, giggling, he drunk on his rebellion, she exhilarated by his sacrifice. And Martin was far from devastated to have lost his fortune. He seemed to have found a new sense of freedom and the next day was insistently determined to get her to agree to marrying without more delay.
‘Why do you always want to wait? We’ve no one to please but ourselves now. My work is selling well. We won’t starve. You can give up tin bashing and take up whitesmithing. It’ll be marvellous! We’ll be happy.’ He kissed her but she stopped him, wondering if every prospective bride felt so hesitant.
‘Martin, we can’t go out and get married just like that. We’ll have to make plans…’
‘All right, here’s a plan. A special licence, a register office, a reception in my gallery, a honeymoon in Cornwall.’ He grinned and started singing, ‘“It won’t be a stylish marriage, I can’t afford a carriage…”’ And Kate thumped him and then kissed him.
But her hesitation puzzled her as much as it did Martin. It wasn’t because she doubted her love for him. It wasn’t even that sometimes she thought he loved her more for what she symbolized than for what she was. She knew her very unsuitability sealed his rebel status, his bohemian image of himself. It wasn’t because of Johnny, who had found happiness with the blonde from the bookshop. No. It was because of Nora and what she suspected Martin still felt for her.
*
Nora was free. Kate learned from Martin that Mrs Cliffe had made good her promise. Chibby had left for Europe to drum up other backers for his business and while he was gone, Mrs Cliffe had spirited Nora away too. Or rather, Martin had. Mrs Cliffe had rented a cottage from a friend in Sussex and had secreted Nora there. It seemed the ideal place – within Paul’s reach, but out of Chibby’s. It was natural for Mrs Cliffe to call on her ‘chauffeur’ to drive Nora down to Sussex – not in his mother’s car, as that ‘privilege’ had been removed, but in his own. And for some reason the thought of the two of them motoring through the countryside in the red Baby Austin made Kate feel jealous. She was embarrassed by the feeling. After all, it wasn’t anything like one of her jaunts with Martin; there was nothing carefree or joyful in poor Nora’s situation. She was leaving her marriage with nothing, going into hiding in fear for her safety, with no clear idea of how she’d provide for her son, nor how she would live. The last thing on her mind would be a romance with Martin. And, of course, it would be the last thing on his mind too. Why would he throw his inheritance and his mother’s good opinion away if he didn’t love Kate more than anyone else in the world?
*
It was a Saturday evening. Kate knelt by the garret window, which she’d opened to let out the solder fumes. She was making a small tin bath for Conny’s baby. She’d shaped each end into smooth curves with a leather-covered hammer and for the last two hours had been soldering the seams. Conny wa
s on late shift and Kate hoped to surprise her with the finished article when she arrived home. She hadn’t been able to bring her gas stove with her from Belgravia, but she’d found an alternative. Beside her was a small primus stove, with a cradle specially designed for heating soldering irons over the flame. She put the cooled soldering iron she’d been using onto the cradle and removed the hot one. Putting the iron’s glowing tip to the seam, she applied the solder, which flowed magically upwards in silver teardrops, attracted by the hot tip. She’d almost finished the final seam when she heard a noise on the stairs.
‘Conny, is that you? Let yourself in – I’m in the middle of something!’ she called, disappointed that her friend had arrived home before she’d finished the bath. Oh well, she’d have to attach the handles later. She laid the still-hot soldering iron onto a tile and eased herself up. Throwing a blanket over the bath, she turned towards the door, ready for the grand unveiling. But the surprise was Kate’s. She took in a sharp breath and held it as her father walked slowly into the smoky room. His large-framed, black-suited figure made the space, and her, feel small.
She stood, frozen by the shock. He was meant to be on the continent! He closed the door, took off his black homburg and laid it carefully on a chair before going to close the window.
‘Katy, I was disappointed that you never came to say goodbye to “yer old man”,’ he said, grinning at his deliberate broad Bermondsey and not looking in the least disappointed.
She walked towards him, intending to show him out. ‘All right, if you want I’ll say it now. Goodbye, Dad.’ But as she drew closer, he held up a hand to stop her.
‘I don’t understand why you didn’t. It was rude, Katy, not to tell me to my face you were going. You were always entirely free to come or go as you pleased. Sit down.’ He said it in such a way that she found herself about to obey. He seemed to own the room, and she gave an involuntary shudder, remembering that he had once lived here too. Her new memory of him vied with her old, causing her anger to boil up. She wouldn’t be intimidated by him.
‘No, Dad. I don’t want to sit down. Why are you here?’
‘I’ve come to see my ungrateful daughter!’
‘That’s not the reason. You’re here because you’re scared.’
He laughed and stared at her with disdain. ‘Scared? Of you? Hardly. Actually, I’ve come to talk sense into you. Whatever you’ve been telling Mrs Cliffe, it’s ruining my business. You’ll have to go and retract it all. And don’t deny it was you slandering me. You’re the only one who witnessed…’ He hesitated. ‘…that period of my life.’
Kate realized that, with a stupidity born of arrogance, he still completely trusted that his abandoned sister Sylvie had kept her silence.
‘I won’t retract nothing. I’ve told Mrs Cliffe everything I’ve remembered. And that’s what’s scared you. What I remember.’
His eyes narrowed to sleepy slits and he was very still, almost relaxed, with his hands loose at his sides, his feet planted wide apart.
‘So, tell me, what is it that you remember?’
‘It was seeing Mum’s earring in Nora’s jewellery box that did it. It all came back. I remembered how you come home that night, you woke me up with all your shouting at her, and I remember how she cried out when you hit her, and I remember how I saw you rip the earrings out of her ears…’ She was quiet for a second and could almost see the calculations going on behind those half-closed eyes. He was wondering how much of this she’d revealed to his wife.
‘And that’s what I told Nora. Just so she’d know what a wicked, vicious monster you really are!’ She felt no fear at all, just a soaring exhilaration that she’d faced him with the truth. ‘And I ain’t taking back one bleedin’ word of it!’
His stillness transformed in a fluid instant, so that she saw only the blur of movement as he sprang forward, snatched up the forming hammer from her bench, and whirled like a dervish in a low circle, swinging the hammer till it connected with Kate’s temple. A moment’s terror was all she felt as the murky light in the room was swallowed by the darkness.
*
She came to, she didn’t know how long after, her throat dry as sandpaper, and found she couldn’t breathe. Painful light burst in through the slits of her eyelids. She forced them wide open and found herself looking into the cold eyes of her father, understanding now why her heaving chest could suck in no air. His thumbs were squeezing her windpipe closed. She clawed at his hands, trying to scream, but producing only a choking rattle. From far away she heard him speaking and struggled to understand. She caught one word – repeated again and again – Nora.
‘What did you tell Nora? Why has Nora left me? Where is Nora? Tell me!’
Her eyes felt as if they might pop out of her head and she knew, in one calm corner of her mind, that if she didn’t dislodge his hold right now, she would certainly die. The force of his attack must have thrust them back into the room, for she’d felt her head crack against the tin bath’s rim. But the jolt had also released his grip a fraction, and now, taking a drowning gasp of air, she flailed her arms and stretched her fingers taut till she felt the primus flame burn them. She recoiled, and as she did so, her fingers closed around the familiar worn handle of her soldering iron. She gripped it like a drowning woman would a piece of flotsam and, summoning all her strength, she swung it upwards, smashing it into his skull. He grunted, loosened his grip and staggered back against the door.
Move! But her body wouldn’t respond. Run! She struggled to her knees, gulping for air. Now! But there was no way out. His unconscious figure blocked the doorway entirely. She had no strength to pull him out of the way. There was only one place she could go.
Everything seemed much darker now. She peered through a tunnel of red mist, her vision narrowed to what was directly in front of her. She felt a dull throbbing in her right temple and a searing pain across the back of her neck, but it was her throat that hurt the most – it burned as if a fiery noose had bitten through her skin. She crawled to the end wall of her garret, not stopping to look behind her. The unbroken darkness when she reached the far wall was almost a relief as she felt for her tin box. Behind it was the low hinged door that she’d used in her escape from Aunt Sylvie’s on her first day at Boutle’s. She shoved the box aside and wriggled through the hatch, pulling the tin box after her before closing the small door.
With pounding heart and her head bursting with pain, she staggered to her feet and stumbled forward through next door’s attic. The connecting garrets were, from here on, open for the entire length of several houses. The bird droppings were deeper beneath her feet than before, and the spiders’ webs, like thick curtains, clutched and caught her as she swam through them. And this time, her escape was slow, shot with pain and terror as she imagined hearing her father’s footsteps behind her. She dared not stop, but blundered on till she reached a brick wall. Pressing herself against its solid, crusted surface, she felt her heart thumping. She was in the last house of East Lane, where mad old Longbonnet lived.
She wanted only to sink down now, to sleep. But a cracked, quavery voice seemed to echo through time and around the garret. ‘This way!’ it said, and she remembered the smugglers’ escape route ended here, with stairs down to the yard and the river beyond. She reached up to a wooden pulley, and holding tight to the frayed fragment of rope, she followed it, almost blind now, to a narrow door in the back wall. Why couldn’t she see? She wiped a hand across her eyes, and it came away wet, sticky. Her fingers felt her temple and probed the back of her skull. Her whole head was wet, as if she’d dunked her hair in the river. Perhaps she was drowning after all. There was a dormer in here, but no light seemed to reach her. She held her hand inches from her face. Dark, sticky ooze coated it. River mud. She edged on till she found the narrow door in the back wall. Only a few steps now, then down to the yard below and she would be free! But the door wouldn’t open, it was stuck fast, and now she really did need to sleep. Sleep in the garret, her haven. Though th
is was a different house, wasn’t it? She was confused. But it would do – to sleep in, even to die in, as her mother had done. It suddenly seemed unimportant to be free, and she let herself sink down and down, imagining she could hear the dark river lapping over her head.
21
Two of a Kind
Johnny stood in Kate’s garret, listening to Conny.
‘I come home from work and the door was open and I thought that was strange. But then I see the bath.’ Her lip trembled. ‘She must have made it for me baby. And I thought to meself, I bet she’s hiding up the back of the garret, waiting to see how surprised I was with it. But then I saw this.’ She pointed to a puddle of blood. ‘I didn’t know what to do, and you was the first person I thought of. The way she always talked about you… I thought she’d come straight to you if she was ever in trouble.’ Here Conny broke down. ‘Something bad’s happened to her, Johnny. I got a terrible feeling.’
He put an arm around her. ‘Don’t cry, Conny. She’s probably just…’ He searched for an explanation which would convince him. ‘…just had an accident with one of her tools and she’s gone to the doctor to get herself seen to.’
But in his heart, he felt otherwise. Conny was right – if Kate had hurt herself, he was sure she would have come straight to him. However far they’d drifted apart, he knew that much.
He looked around the attic and spotted something under Kate’s bunk. He knelt down and reached under and his hand closed over a metal object. He had the odd sensation that it was burning hot and almost dropped it. As he stood up, inspecting the soldering iron, he felt something else – a sense of menace. He put the iron down, almost gratefully, on Kate’s makeshift bench. Conny joined him. She looked at the soldering iron with a frown. ‘Why would it have been under her bunk?’
‘I don’t know. It must have rolled there when she hurt herself.’
His unease was deepening. He couldn’t stand here any longer, puzzling over the possibilities with Conny. He needed to find Kate – and quickly.
