by Alex Grecian
“He’s not dead yet. Look at him. He won’t last much longer, but who knows? I have a similar wound and I’ve managed to do a great deal despite it. Was he your lover?”
“Yes.”
“Well, this must be heartbreaking for you.” He pointed Mr Parker’s gun at her and pulled the trigger. There was an audible click, but nothing happened. “Oh,” Jack said. “Well, that puts me in a rather difficult situation.”
Mrs Parker stepped forward, the sword raised high. “Are you really him?”
“Him? Do you mean God? Yes, I suppose I am.”
“Kill him,” Mr Parker said. His voice was a liquid whisper. “Help me. We can still get away.”
“Yes, one of us requires your assistance,” Jack said. “I suppose you have a choice. Him or me. I’m really in no position to blame you either way.”
The sword slashed down and Mr Parker’s eyes grew wide. A thin red line appeared on his throat, then opened, and blood cascaded over his collar. He slumped, lifeless, to the alley floor.
“Oh, what a pleasant surprise,” Jack said. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind, I’m not at my best, and we should move quickly if we’re to get away.” He held out his hand, and Mrs Parker hesitated. At last, she lowered the sword and took Jack’s hand.
“Lovely,” Jack said. “But we can’t go that way, my sweet. There will be more people coming.”
“Then . . .”
“We’ll go back in. Through this door is a storeroom.”
“But the store is on fire. It’s falling down.”
“What is life without risk?”
He put his arm around her, and she helped him walk to the door. He produced a key and, as Hatty Pitt worked to keep Dr Kingsley alive, the two monsters entered the inferno and were gone.
AFTER
At last they came upon a clearing in the wood, and there, sitting on a footstool in the center of the clearing, was Peter. The Kindly Nutcracker’s head shouted, “Halt!” and the Rocking Horse skidded to a stop. Anna jumped out of the carriage and ran to Peter and lifted him high in the air. Peter’s little body made of rag and dowels was limp, and one of his legs had broken at the joint so that it swung awkwardly about in the air.
“Why doesn’t he say anything?” asked Mary Annette.
“I don’t know,” said Anna. “He is very limp. I hope he is not taken ill.”
“I know why,” said the Babushka. She rolled out of the carriage and hopped over to Anna. She shivered and quivered and split in half. Then she shivered again and quivered again and split in half once more, and the angriest Babushka jumped out into the clearing.
“I do not like breaking open,” said the angriest Babushka. But then she did break in half, and an even smaller Babushka was revealed. This one wore tiny painted-on spectacles, and her hair was drawn up into a flat glossy bun at the top of her head.
This new Babushka said, “Peter cannot talk to you, Anna, because he was never truly a part of our wood. When we were chopped down to become toys and furnishings and matches, we wanted to come back to see you again. But Peter was not made from the same wood we were. He was already a little doll of rag and wood when you used to play here. And so he remains a doll, but without the spark of life that we have.”
“But what made you come alive?” Anna asked. “If it isn’t this place that has the magic, then what has done it?”
“You did it, Anna,” said the Babushka.
“You missed the wood,” said the Kindly Nutcracker’s head. “And you wanted us to come home to you.”
“You were sad and wanted to play in the wood one more time,” said Mary Annette.
“And so we came to see you,” said the Kindly Nutcracker’s head.
“If I could bring you all to life, then surely I can bring Peter to life as well,” said Anna.
“Perhaps you do not want him to be alive,” the Babushka said.
“Nonsense,” said Anna. She wagged her finger at her doll as if she were scolding a bad little boy. “Peter, I command you to wake up and do a dance for me.”
“But he cannot,” said Mary Annette. “His leg is broken, don’t you see?”
“The Kindly Nutcracker is broken, but he is still able to talk and to steer the carriage,” said Anna. “And, Mary, your strings have all been cut, but you are able to walk and talk just like anything.”
“Anna, soon you will be an adult and you will not wish to play with dolls anymore,” said wise little Babushka. “What will happen to Peter then?”
“Why, I will give him to my own children to play with,” Anna declared.
“Perhaps,” said the Kindly Nutcracker’s head. “Perhaps you should fix Peter’s leg and enjoy him as he was meant to be enjoyed, until such time when you no longer wish to play with him. That would be kinder than making him a living thing that will be sad when you are no longer interested in him.”
Anna lowered her arms and let Peter sit in the dirt while she looked at her new friends. “What will happen to all of you when I am too old to frolic in the wood anymore?” she asked.
“But we all have new homes already,” Mary Annette said. “My puppeteer will miss me if I am not there in the morning. He is creating a new story for me to act out.”
“I was going to be on the mantel of a family’s fireplace at the holiday so that I could break open tough nuts for them to eat.” The Kindly Nutcracker’s fuzzy white beard bristled in the breeze. “Perhaps they will fix me.”
“I am on display at a fabulous department store,” all of the Babushka’s heads said at once. “Soon, a child will convince his mother to purchase me and I will provide amusement for that child. That will be a fine life for me.”
The Rocking Horse rocked back and forth in the grass as if nodding in agreement, and Anna wondered if it already belonged to a child or if it was waiting for someone to come along and discover it.
“But if you are all meant to be somewhere else, then why are you here?” she asked.
“We are here to say our good-byes and to have one last great adventure,” said the Kindly Nutcracker’s head. “By morning we will be gone again, and it will be as though we were never here.”
“Oh, oh, but I will miss you so,” said Anna.
“And we will miss you,” the smallest and wisest part of the Babushka said. “But everything must change, and we must go to our new homes and have many more adventures of a different sort. And you must do the same.”
Anna looked down at Peter, who hung from her hand the way he always had. In the dim light of distant fires, he looked somehow different. But she knew that it wasn’t him at all. He had remained the same, while the world all round her had changed.
“When will you go?” she asked.
“We will be gone when you wake in the morning,” said the wise Babushka. “This place will be as it was when you went to bed last, nothing but stumps and brown grass and the sad little creek that now runs through a field.”
“And I will never see you again?” Anna asked.
“No, but you will remember us,” the Kindly Nutcracker’s head said. “And we will still have the rest of this night to be together.”
“Then there is time for glue,” Anna said. “We must go to my house at the edge of the wood, where my father keeps glue in a drawer in his workshop. He also keeps nails there, as well as the sort of nail that winds round itself.”
“You are talking about wood screws,” the Rocking Horse said.
“Why, Rocking Horse!” Anna exclaimed. “I did not know that you could talk!”
“Neither did I,” said the Rocking Horse. And those were the last words he ever spoke.
“It would be kind of you to glue me back together,” said the Kindly Nutcracker’s head. “I am glad you were able to find all the parts of me that were broken apart by that rascal Jack.”
“Is it possible for you t
o mend my strings?” asked Mary Annette.
“I am sure we can,” Anna said. “Now we must hurry before dawn breaks and you all must leave. I will make you all whole again so you will look proper for your new homes.”
Anna clambered back up in the carriage after helping the Babushkas in first and putting all her parts back together into a single egg shape. The Kindly Nutcracker’s head yelled, “Haw!” and the Rocking Horse plunged forward.
When they had arrived at Anna’s home, she ran to her father’s shed, where he kept glue in a drawer and nails in a box, and she put the Kindly Nutcracker all back together, except for one small piece that she could not find. But the hole where that piece belonged was on the bottom of his feet, which were all fashioned from the same chunk of wood that had been painted blue and did not separate. She did not think anyone would notice the missing piece if the nutcracker stayed in his place on the mantel and did his job, which was to crack open nuts. Then she nailed Mary Annette’s strings back into place on her cross.
And she glued Jack’s box shut to keep him from springing out and surprising people. While her friends watched, she put Jack’s box at the bottom of her toy chest so that the other toys could all keep an eye on him and keep him out of trouble.
When she woke in the morning, she ran to the window. The sky was a light blue color smudged with grey, and silhouetted against it were queue after endless queue of stumps where there had once been trees. Her friends were gone, except of course for Peter, and except for Jack, too, because he had been given to her as a gift.
Many years later, when she had children of her own and they had children, too, Anna asked for her old toy chest to be brought down from the attic, and she took Peter out and gave him to her littlest granddaughter so that she might have a new playmate and so that Peter would have a new friend, too.
Her eyes were not good anymore, and so she did not notice that Jack and his box were missing from the chest.
—RUPERT WINTHROP, FROM The Wandering Wood (1893)
59
In the spring of 1891, Plumm’s department store burned to the ground after a top-floor storeroom full of ammunition and lamp oil exploded. Hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of merchandise was destroyed, and seven bodies, burnt beyond recognition, were later found in the rubble. John Plumm was traveling in France at the time and he stayed there until the London press moved on to other, fresher stories and his creditors had been dealt with.
Plumm’s had been touted as the biggest and most extravagant experience to be had in London since the Crystal Palace, and many years passed before another enterprise of its type was attempted.
But in that same season, the city produced two other momentous events, neither of which received the sort of notice that Plumm’s did: Inspector Walter Day resumed his life, and Dr Bernard Kingsley, late of University College Hospital, passed away quietly in his sleep.
60
For the first weeks after Dr Kingsley’s death, his daughter visited his grave every day. Sometimes she would see Timothy Pinch there, and twice she saw Hatty Pitt. She did not speak to either of them. On her fifth visit she found Walter Day at her father’s grave, standing next to a rather pretty young woman whom she hadn’t met. She ignored Walter, but the woman intrigued her, and so she introduced herself.
“I’m very sorry, Miss Kingsley,” the woman said.
“Did you know my father?”
“Not well, I’m afraid. I was injured and he helped me. I should introduce myself. My name is Esther Paxton.”
“Oh,” Fiona said. “You were the one . . .” Her voice trailed off and she made an effort not to look at Walter, who stood awkwardly nearby holding a bouquet of flowers.
Esther saw the expression on Fiona’s face and she flushed. She looked at the tops of her shoes. “I just came to say good-bye.”
“To my father?”
“Yes, and to Mr Day. I never knew Walter’s name or that he had a family. I hope you’ll believe that.”
“Of course.”
“I should have known, I should have thought . . . But I was happy just to have someone there with me again. I would never have—”
“No, I know. Nobody thinks less of you. You helped him when he needed help, and everyone is so very grateful to you.”
“That’s kind of you.”
“Perhaps you could visit sometime. I’m sure Claire would be delighted to meet you.”
Esther made a small noise and smiled at Fiona. “No. I have my shop to look after, you see. Business is quite good lately, since the fire. My customers are returning.”
Day took a step closer to them and fiddled with the flowers in his hand. “I’m so glad to hear that, Esther. I mean, Mrs Paxton.”
“Thank you, Walter.” She didn’t look up at him. “Miss Kingsley, I’m glad to meet you. From what little I knew of him, I’m sure your father was a good man.”
“Thank you.”
“If you’ll excuse me, I have another grave to see this morning. My husband is buried over there.” She pointed. “He’s in that copse of trees, and it’s been too long since I visited him.”
She left them there, and they watched her walk away. After some time, Walter laid his flowers on Dr Kingsley’s grave and reached out, touched Fiona’s arm, then walked away in the opposite direction.
Fiona remained at the grave that entire morning, as was her custom. It was peaceful there, and quiet. Eventually she took out her sketchbook and began to draw a bird that had perched on her father’s stone.
61
Nevil Hammersmith packed away his documentation of the Walter Day case and put it all into storage. With the clutter gone, his office seemed bare and forbidding, and so he moved back into his flat and learned to enjoy the company of his new fern.
Walter Day slept in Hammersmith’s office, taking advantage of the empty space and the unused bedroll. He made daily trips to Finsbury Circus, teaching the boys there to sort leftover tobacco by color and age, and to roll new cigars. He gave his folding tray, along with his Reasonable Tobacco sign, to Jerome, who seemed to be the most responsible and resourceful of the lads.
They did not talk about their friend Ambrose.
And Day did not return again to Drapers’ Gardens.
One evening, in the second week after his return, Claire Day came to visit him at Hammersmith’s offices. Fiona Kingsley accompanied her, but Claire left the children at home with their new governess.
Hammersmith, Fiona, and Hatty Pitt waited in the outer office while Claire talked with her husband, and Hammersmith sent Eugenia Merrilow out to fetch tea for them all.
• • •
“IT’S TIME FOR YOU to come home,” Claire said.
“You know I can’t do that,” Walter said.
“So you plan to live here, in poor Nevil’s office on the floor?”
“I’ll find another place to live.”
“Oh? And will you return to that woman?”
Day knew she meant Esther Paxton. “I never . . . Claire, I wasn’t myself.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I cared very much for Esther, but she was only a friend, and never anything more than that. Somehow, I always knew in my heart I was a married man.”
“And that’s all that kept you from her bed?”
“Of course not,” he said. “And, no, to answer your question properly, I have no plans to ever see her again. Nor do I believe she wishes to see me.”
There was a long silence before Claire spoke again. “I think I can live with that,” she said. “I do trust you, Walter. But . . .”
“But I stabbed your father.” Walter smiled. “You know, I’ve always wanted to stab your father, but I regret doing it in front of you.”
Claire looked away and smiled. “It’s not that. He’ll live. I’ve spoken to Sir Edward, and he explained that you’d been m
anipulated somehow, that you didn’t know what you were doing. I can’t imagine what you must have gone through.”
“I’d rather you never know.”
“But I hope you will tell me sometime, when things have settled and you feel comfortable.”
“If it’s not your father, there must be something else troubling you.”
“Why didn’t you come back?”
“I didn’t . . . I didn’t remember.”
“But, Walter, why didn’t you remember me?”
His eyes filled with tears, and he put his arm up so she wouldn’t see. He turned away from her and she waited, without going to him or touching him. When he spoke, his voice was like the fog that had lifted from the city. “I did remember. I did, but I lied to myself. I couldn’t lead him back to you. I couldn’t bring that to our house again. I thought I had to start anew and let you go on to live a better life.”
And then she did go to him and put her hand on his arm, and he turned toward her.
“Oh, Walter, I can’t live any sort of life without you.”
“At some point, once the police conclude their investigation, they’re going to take me to prison, Claire.”
“So you’ve continued to stay away.”
“I’ve only tried to shelter you.”
“The men in my life are constantly trying to shelter me, to protect me from themselves and from each other, deciding what’s best for me at every turn. I’m quite sick and tired of it all. I don’t want everything to be hidden away from me. I’m a grown woman and I’m perfectly capable of making my own choices.”
“I don’t want you or the children to see me behind bars.”
“As I say, I’ve spoken to Sir Edward and I don’t believe he has any such plan.”
“I’d like to hear that from him.”
“Then we’ll pay him a visit today. I want our life back. My bed is cold, and the children need their father.”
“Are you sure you—”
“As I say, I can make my own decisions, Walter. And it seems I need to make yours for you, too. So it’s settled. You’re coming home with me, and I won’t hear another word about it.”
