by Joan Aiken
Probably because she was low-spirited and worried, she had dreamed about her father on almost every night of the voyage, although nowadays, during her daytime existence, she did not consciously miss him. Every night she had talked to him, laughed with him, been comforted by his companionship; each morning she had woken to dried tears on her cheeks and the knowledge of loneliness.
“Look, there come the tugs,” observed her companion. “It begins to look as if we shall make land after all.”
“I had better go and collect my things,” Val said, realising that all the other passengers were dashing about like possessed lemmings. People who had not shown their noses on deck for the whole voyage suddenly appeared; the air was full of excited joyful chatter.
“Go below? For your things? Do you have to? Won’t someone bring them up?” Mr. Cusack seemed surprised.
“No—who? I haven’t got much. I’ll see you on the dock, I expect—” she said vaguely and hurried down the companionway. Her anxiety had turned to restlessness; she must be doing something, although no doubt it would be a long time yet before they docked. She found her cabin companions, up at last, feverishly bustling about and impeding one another, curling their hair, pinning their collars, putting on rouge to disguise the ill-effects of the trip. It was impossible to come near the tiny mirror; in any case, why bother? She was only being met by her brother, after all. Val pushed the last of her belongings into her two small bags and, grasping their handles firmly, walked up on deck. The docking had proceeded faster than she had expected; already the ship was alongside the wharf, edging in closer and closer. Hopefully she scanned the heads of the crowd on shore for a lint-white mop of hair standing higher than the rest.
But the crowd broke and flowed distractingly; no one kept still for a moment; it was impossible to pick out individuals.
Perhaps he would be waiting by the companionway.
At last the ship was made fast and instantly passengers began pouring ashore by two gangways. Val was swept off in the first wave and suddenly found herself on solid land, which seemed to rock underfoot more violently than the deck had done at its worst. She staggered and grabbed for a convenient upright post. A man laughed at her, not unkindly.
“Porter, lady?”
“No, thanks, I’m being met.”
Escaping to the rear of the crowd she put down her bags and looked about her. A confusion of coaches and baggage carts were picking up the passengers and their bundles. No sign of Nils. But there was plenty of time. Quite two thirds of the passengers had still to disembark.
Among the cries of greeting and recognition, clamour of porters, and shouts of dockers unloading mail, she caught a familiar voice behind her.
“Ah, there you are, John-Jo—”
“Oh, Sir Marcus, you do look poorly. You should have taken me along to look after you, wasn’t I after telling you so?”
“Nonsense, John-Jo, you would have been nothing but a nuisance. I managed very well.”
Turning she saw her companion of the trip being greeted effusively by a little roly-poly man, apparently his servant, who relieved him of various wraps and a brief case, bobbing up and down with joy, and then rushing off with the things to an adjacent brougham. Val smiled involuntarily at the disparity between the two men. At that moment Cusack looked up and caught her eye. He gave some brief order to John-Jo, who immediately made off toward the ship. For a moment she lost sight of Cusack in the crowd, then she found him beside her.
“I began to fear I might not see you again,” he said—she could only just hear his rather dry voice amid the cries of the crowd. “Here—”
He was proffering something small and white; even in the midst of her acute anxiety and suspense she was a little startled and entertained to see that it was a visiting card. Somehow their companionship had not seemed to be proceeding on the kind of level that accords with the exchange of cards; she would have been quite prepared to part from him without any of the conventional social usages; had, indeed, hardly expected to see him again. But she took the card with a murmur of thanks and tucked it into her muff.
“Being met by your brother?” she heard above the clamour. Although his voice was colourless, a certain air of concern was detectible in it. “Are you sure about that?”
“I daresay he’s here somewhere,” Val said hopefully, looking around. “And if he isn’t, it doesn’t matter. I have his address in London.”
“Here we are, Sir Marcus.” Little John-Jo the manservant had reappeared, staggering under three large leather portmanteaux and a thick fur steamer rug. “Now we’re all Sir Garnet. You pop into the broo’m, sir, and I’ll wrap you up snug. I’ve a fine room booked for you at the hotel.”
“You’re sure I can’t drive you anywhere, Miss Montgomery?”
“No, no, thanks, really, I shall be quite all right.” She was quite amazed at such thought and solicitude. “I hope you have a good journey to Scotland.”
“Oh—yes,” he said. “Thank you. Supposing that you should find your brother out of town, what then?”
“That’s not very likely,” said Val, “since he has a wife and it’s for her sake I’ve come. But if he should be out of town, I shall stay at the Jersey Hotel in Tabernacle Street, near St. Paul’s. I have stayed there before and it is very comfortable.”
He gave a nod. “Oh yes—the Jersey—not a bad place. Well—if you are sure—”
“Yes, thank you. I’ll really be quite all right.”
Her wish to see Nils had suddenly become so intense that she longed to cut this conversation short; all she wanted to do was look about her, concentrate on scrutinising the shifting crowd. As if guessing her wish, Cusack said, “Well—goodbye, then—” gave her a brief, strange, difficult smile—his first, she afterward recalled, since the beginning of their acquaintance—and allowed himself to be steered away by John-Jo. Val instantly forgot him.
By now most of the passengers had disembarked, and a large proportion had already been driven away in various equipages or had left the dock for the railway station at the rear.
The area near the ship was fairly clear. She could not see Nils anywhere.
Buttonholing a passing porter, Val asked him when the boat train left.
“There’s two, miss. One goes in five minutes, t’other in an hour.”
Since it was plain that she could not expect to be united with Nils in time to catch the earlier train, Val resigned herself to wait and looked round for a seat. There was none. She changed some money, bought a newspaper at a stall, and found a pillar to lean against, where she could keep an eye on the thinning crowd, now mostly composed of stevedores unloading heavy baggage from the ship.
Still no sign of Nils.
After another half hour she decided to give him up, and made her way toward the station. By now dusk was falling and she felt weary, confused, hungry, and bitterly disappointed. It was foolish to have laid such store on being met. She might have known Nils would never do it. Go all the way to Southampton, when she could just as easily get on a train by herself? Benet would have, she thought. I’ve been spoiled by Benet, that’s the truth. And, not for the first time, nor the last, she longed for his calm, warm, reliable presence.
There were plenty of porters free, now; she beckoned one and tipped him a shilling to find her a corner seat while she bought her train ticket. The second-class compartment was empty when he installed her in it and put her bags in the rack overhead, but it rapidly filled up. Two immensely fat old countrywomen installed themselves alongside and opposite Val, and immediately went on with a conversation that had obviously stood them in good stead all their lives.
“No, as I say, Mrs. Jennings, I like something substantial for my dinner, say some pea soup to begin with, then a biled leg of mutton with plenty of fat, with turnips and caper sauce, followed by tripe and onion and some nice suet dumplings as a finish.”
“For my part, mum, I prefer something more tasty and flavoursome; now a well-cooked bullock’s heart, followed by some liver and bacon and a dish of greens, then a jam bolster and a black pudding and some toasted cheese to top up with—”
Val felt all her queasiness of the voyage return. The engine let out a shriek and a series of diminishing puffs; the train jolted off into the dark. Val stared out at the black, rainy countryside. I am in England, she thought, but felt none of the romantic excitement of her previous visits.
“Excuse me, dear,” said one of the old women kindly and leaned past Val to pull the red rep curtains, blocking out her view altogether. Val knew that it would be sensible to try and sleep, in order to reach London refreshed, but she was unable to lull her mind into somnolence. Mentally she began letters to Benet. “Dearest Benet, I love you with all my heart but I don’t think I can stand the prospect of pink roses the size of footballs on our dining room chairs and having to call on your cousins every week.” “Dearest Benet, it would never have worked.” “Dearest Benet, please come and see me in England. I need you so badly.”
Sighing, she unfolded the Morning Post again and scanned its columns with an apathetic eye. She had bought it hoping to find the column that Nils wrote, but there was nothing by him on the Court and Society pages. She turned to Home News. Parliament was reassembling after the summer vacation, and Lord Clanreydon, the enfant terrible of the Whig party, had made an inflammatory speech about the Irish Question. A revival of Ariel at the Gaiety, with Meyer-Lutz’s music, had been received by a rapturous audience. Miss Farren, wearing electrically lit wings, had danced exquisitely. The queen’s dentist had been given a knighthood. The first lady to do so had climbed Ben Nevis. General William Booth, in a speech at Scarborough, had called on the police to lose no further time in tracking down the perpetrator of the dreadful Bermondsey murders, of which there had been two more last week after a long gap during which it had been hoped that the murderer had died or disappeared. The Army and Navy Gazette was recommending that all soldiers carry slippers.
Val turned to the editorial column which was speculating as to whether, if Lord Clanreydon headed a Liberal breakaway including Bright, Hartington, and Chamberlain, Mr. Gladstone might retire from public life (as he had once before) and a new Liberal party reassemble under Clanreydon’s leadership . . .
Val must have slept, in the end. She woke with a jerk, stiff, cramped, and startled, as the train came to a grinding halt. Following the old ladies out she found herself in a bewildering chaos of crowds, gas lamps, steps, rails, balconies, luggage, and great choking clouds of sooty steam.
“Cab, lady?” A porter snatched at her bags. “This way. Jest you follow me.”
She went dazedly after him through the turmoil and climbed with his assistance into a hansom.
“Where to, lady?”
“Welbeck Street—number twenty-three—”
Just giving the address imbued her with confidence. It sounded so respectable and established. The driver nodded and whipped up his horse; the cab rattled down the cobbled slope from Waterloo station. Evidently the bad weather of the voyage had now reached London: rain dashed against the cab’s apron and rattled on the leather hood; hanging streetlamps swung wildly. I hope Nils and Kirstie are at home, sitting in front of a blazing fire, thought Val. Kirstie is sure to be in, anyway, because of the children. And they’ll have had my cable, they’ll be expecting me—won’t they?
Now the cab was crossing a bridge; dangling reflections in the river broke and bounced as the gale thrashed the black, invisible water. “Is it far to Welbeck Street?” Val called up to the driver. “Matter o’ fifteen minutes,” he replied briefly.
His horse plunged on fast, as if hating the weather, and the journey was shorter than Val had expected; soon they were proceeding more slowly along a demure-looking street, while the driver studied the house numbers.
“’Ere, didn’t you say twenty-three, lidy?” he asked aggrievedly.
“Yes, twenty-three.” To reassure herself, Val pulled out her last letter from Nils, but she could not see the address in the dark. But in any case she knew it by heart.
“Yer must ‘a got it wrong. Look, this ‘ouse is empty. Sign up says For Sale” the driver pointed out. “Sure it ain’t twenty-five? Or twenty-two?”
Val’s heart fell horribly. “No, I’m certain,” she answered the driver. “Twenty-three Welbeck Street is the address.”
“Well, your parties must ‘ave moved, then,” he snapped. “See for yourself. Watcher going to do? You going to get out ‘ere, or not?”
Val peered hopelessly at the house, which was dimly illuminated by a gas streetlight. As the driver had said, it was shuttered and unlit. An agent’s For Sale notice was attached to the front railings. What could she do? Get out into the wet and dark? Hammer on the locked door? What would be the point of that? She imagined herself left in the wet, empty street with her bags, while the hansom clattered off into the dark. The idea was too dismaying to be entertained.
“No, I won’t get out,” she said. “Take me to the Jersey Hotel, in Tabernacle Street.”
“Saved a deal o’ trouble if you’d ‘a said that fust off,” grumbled the driver, turning his horse. “Right the other side o’ town, that is, an’ my nag’s tired.”
The cab slowly got under way again.
By the time they had reached the Jersey Hotel Val had acknowledged to herself that, from the very first, she had a premonitory feeling that something of this kind was going to happen. Why? She hardly knew. Somehow, among all the things that Nils had said, nothing, really, had given her any confidence. Now she admitted to herself that she had believed him only because she wanted to; she had come to England simply because she needed to escape from her own predicament. None of his airy promises had seemed valid to her. Indeed now, tired and discouraged as she was at present, Nils himself hardly seemed to have any reality; he seemed like some teasing marsh fairy, a will-o’-the-wisp that would dance away over the bog, pale hair flying, eyes bright with malice, leaving her far behind, up to her knees in mud and mire.
The light streaming out from the Jersey Hotel, however, looked homely and welcoming. She paid off the cab and found with relief that the hotel had a single room at a reasonable price. A porter led her upstairs. The interior was as she remembered it from a visit with her father—old-fashioned dark panelling, red carpets, lithographs on the walls. Comfortable smells of gravy, dusty carpet, brown sherry, and old polished wood.
“The dining room’s down that way, miss, if you should be wanting supper.”
Her bedroom was warm but small, with little more than a white-spread bed, washstand with jug and basin, a chair, and a small table.
“No, I’ll just have some soup in my room,” Val said. The bed drew her; she longed in every bone to throw herself on it and sleep and sleep.
Outside the curtained window she heard the solemn boom of St. Paul’s clock striking ten.
Next morning, drinking the Jersey Hotel’s excellent coffee, Val wondered what she should do. Where to begin?
A fair night’s sleep had cleared her mind. Instead of the evening’s phantasmagoric images, she was able to see that Nils had probably been summoned home by some financial crisis. He had plainly been pressed for money when he arrived in America; and perhaps he had not done as well there as he had hoped. And while he was away, perhaps Kirstie had been obliged to move out of their house; it was possible that they had written to Val about it and she had sailed before their letter arrived. So how would she find them? Through the house agent, presumably. She would have to go back to Welbeck Street.
Then it occurred to her that an even simpler source of information would be the offices of the Morning Post in Fleet Street, close at hand.
The Morning Post proved unable to help, however. Yes, Mr. Hansen was a contributor, but he did not belong to the regular staff, and, in an
y case, had taken a month’s leave of absence which had been prolonged to six weeks, during which time there had been no word from him. The only address they had for him was the Welbeck Street one.
This was disappointing, but Val’s doom-laden feelings of the evening before had lifted. The day helped to raise her spirits; it was a clear, pale, frosty autumn morning. With a feeling of adventure she walked the bustling streets, bought a map of London, and boarded a westbound horse bus, cheered by the thought of how scandalized Mrs. Chauncey and old Mrs. Allerton would be, could they see her now.
Welbeck Street, with a silvery sun dispersing the morning mist, looked clean and cheerful, quite different from the dark, lonely, wet, unwelcoming place it had seemed last night. Val walked along to number twenty-three and took note of the For Sale notice. The house agent’s address was in a street she had noticed not far off, Stratford Place; she turned to go back there, but, before leaving, lingered a moment, studying the empty house, as if hoping it could tell her why its inmates had suddenly departed. There were evidences of a recent removal; straw, paper, string in the front area, and a flash of something pink—what was it that lay down there?
The area gate swung open; on a sudden impulse Val ran down the steps and picked up the pink object. It was a child’s toy—a small painted wooden pig with black glossy patches and ears made from leather. She had sent it to Pieter herself, for his third birthday.
As she stood holding it in the gateway, staring at it rather blankly, a large horse-drawn removal van drew up outside the house and two aproned men jumped briskly down, and, consulting a paper, unlocked the front door, went into the house, and began to carry out various articles of furniture—bureaux, escritoires, armchairs, sofas, tables.
