by David Wake
But the man had gone.
Charlotte was not entirely convinced she knew what a ‘strumpet’ was, but it didn’t sound good. It might, she realised, refer to one of those unfortunate fallen women, whom the Reverend Long insisted had brought all their misfortunes down upon themselves and that you young ladies will certainly go the same way if you don’t blah–blah–blah. He didn’t explain what a ‘fallen woman’ actually was, unless he did so between the middle of his sermon and the inevitable ‘Charlotte, sit up’ that came before the end.
And, Charlotte realised, she could not be a fallen woman, because, even after being attacked, she was the one still standing and the man they’d just carted away had been the one on the floor.
“What are you doing?” thundered another man’s voice.
There were muffled replies.
Charlotte sneaked a look.
“Oh Mister Waggstaff, Mister Waggstaff,” Madam Waggstaff wailed.
The brightly waist–coated man ignored her and shouted at the top of his voice: “These are my girls! Mine! Get yer own.”
Chief Examiner Lombard levelled a device, a kind of gun ending in a giant two–pronged fork: it buzzed and sparked with a dazzle far brighter than the gaslight. Mister Waggstaff, if it was him, jerked upright, shook as if he were having a fit and specks of spittle formed around his lips, before, all of a sudden, he went rigid and keeled over.
Madam Waggstaff screeched and wailed, and threw herself over his prostrate form.
As the Chief Examiner wrapped up his weapon, the other two Peelers removed the arrested man. This gave Charlotte the opportunity to confront the leader.
“Excuse me, Sir,” she said, “but what are you arresting that man for?”
The Chief Examiner paused, looking utterly blank, the white, slatted glasses staring down disconcertingly, before he spoke:
“He destroyed the world.”
Chapter IV
Miss Deering-Dolittle
Earnestine arrived home late.
She was tired after work and not one of her sisters had stayed up to thank her. Not that Charlotte should have been allowed, of course, but honestly. Again, she was the one looking after them; again, she was the responsible one and, again, she was unappreciated.
Cook had left her a cold collation.
Their house in Zebediah Row seemed completely quiet as if she were the only one there.
Well, good riddance to them, they could nap all day and all night for all she cared, but as she tried to sleep, she couldn’t.
She looked at the evening paper, but it was all full of news about arrests and there was nothing about any expeditions, so she turned out the gas again and lay in the dark with various inventions whirring around in her thoughts and eventually in her dreams, mutating slowly in a mad workshop of mechanical toys.
Mrs Arthur Merryweather
A strange half–voice sounded from the pitch darkness: “Miss?”
“Yes?” Georgina wanted to sound confident, but her enunciation cracked.
The man was short, bent over with wisps of white hair protruding from under his bowler hat. He seemed to look with only one eye.
“Are you the lady we have been expecting?”
“I am Mrs Arthur Merryweather, if that’s who you mean?”
“Merryweather, you say?”
“Yes, I say.”
“That is to be decided.”
“No it isn’t, it has been decided already.”
“We must examine–”
“I have my certificate.”
“And witnesses to–”
“God, and half a regiment of British officers as well as my sister were witnesses.”
“We will be asking Arthur.”
Georgina was outraged and then realised that the figure was shambling away.
Georgina followed: “Excuse me, but who exactly might you be?”
“I am Fellowes.”
“Yes, exactly what?”
“Fellowes, just Fellowes.”
They reached a small pony and trap. The man indicated that Georgina should climb aboard.
“My trunk?”
Fellowes considered this a while. He did not appear to be strong enough to pick up her trunk.
“I will send the boy back for it.”
“I can’t leave it there.”
“No–one will take it and it will save time if it is here already for the return train in the morning.”
“I need my belongings.”
Again, the man considered this and then, with a limp that he hadn’t had before, he went back to the platform and scraped the trunk along. Georgina stood with her hands together in front of her as she watched him struggle theatrically.
“Oh, let me help,” she said.
She took one end, and the man relinquished his part of the bargain immediately. He shambled back to the trap, leaving Georgina to struggle across the platform and heave the trunk up onto the transport. Perhaps she hadn’t needed the spare corset or those lovely shoes or the towel?
When she reached the trap, Fellowes was already sitting in the front with the reins in hand, staring out into the darkness, ready to face with fortitude the eternity that it took for Georgina to lift the trunk onto the back.
It didn’t fit exactly, so she had to bump it around until she believed it would stay in place. Finally, she brushed her dress down straight, stood as upright as possible to recover some dignity and then went to the passenger side.
Fellowes sat there without even looking at her.
A lady should not get into a carriage without assistance.
She had been brought up properly and she would wait.
However, it was cold and getting darker all the time.
Negotiating raising her skirts, hiding her ankle, getting her foot in the metal step and jumping up required three attempts, but she pulled herself into her seat eventually.
“Now, Fellowes, you–”
They were off!
The pony dithering left until yanked around, and Georgina nearly fell out. Five hundred yards from the station the lane narrowed, so that branches from the stunted trees swiped at them dangerously as they hurtled along. The low moon cast a pale light interrupted by the stone walls and by distant rocky outcrops.
“I know it like the back of my hand,” said Fellowes, anticipating a question that hadn’t crossed Georgina’s mind. She was too busy holding on to the metal rail to think clearly.
They passed through a village complete with a church with a clock tower and a pub with a hanging sign, a painting of a man fighting a monster.
When she thought it would never end, they turned into a wider, more level road and the dry stone walls and bushes no longer hemmed them in on either side. The sudden space gave Georgina a desperate, isolating, agoraphobic panic. It was like the pony and trap were transporting them over a black and calm River Styx.
“Magdalene Chase,” said Fellowes.
Georgina looked – nothing.
And then she saw a black slab of a building against the dark sky and, to the right and high up, a weak flickering light.
Fellowes pulled the pony to a stop outside the main entrance, a dark door framed by white stone pillars that loomed over them.
Georgina climbed down.
“I’ll put the pony away,” said Fellowes.
“My trunk!”
“Yes, Miss.”
“Mrs… Ma’am!”
“When you’ve got it down then.”
Georgina stormed round to the back and grasped the handle of her trunk. It wasn’t so much a case of her pulling it down as of the trap being pulled out from under it when Fellowes whipped the pony forward. The trunk swung down and crunched into the gravel. She dragged it to the front and then hefted it up the three steps.
She yanked the bell pull.
There was a delay and then a distant chime.
“Arthur,” she said aloud, mist condensing in front of her, “I can understand why you joined the army.”
Once she had some light, she thought, she’d consult the Great Western timetable for the first return journey.
The door opened: a smartly dressed hag blocked the way in.
“I am expected,” Georgina announced.
The housekeeper opened the door wide: “This way, Miss.”
Georgina held her ground: “Mrs! Ma’am!”
The housekeeper merely looked at her uncomprehendingly.
“This way, Ma’am,” Georgina said. “You say, this–”
“This way… Miss.”
“Ma’am.”
“Mam.”
“My trunk.”
“There’s no–one to bring it in.”
Georgina remembered a suggestion Fellowes had made at the station: “Get the boy.”
“He’s asleep.”
“Then wake him.”
“Very well, Miss.”
Georgina tightened her lips, shocked to realise that she was turning into her elder sister: perhaps she should imitate her voice: “Very well, Ma’am… you say…”
“Very well… Ma’am.”
Georgina crossed the threshold.
It was a wide entrance way with rooms off both sides and a stone staircase leading up to a landing and the upper storey.
“Please wait here,” said the woman. “Fellowes will be along shortly to show you to the temporary guest room.”
Georgina was alone again.
A clock ticked, loud in the reverberating silence of the stone hall.
Eventually, Fellowes returned, visibly taken aback that Georgina was still there.
“You are to show me to my room,” Georgina said.
“Am I?”
“The woman said.”
“Did she?”
“Yes.”
Fellowes crossed the flags and ascended the staircase. Georgina followed, pausing every two steps to allow the man some sort of lead. By the time they reached the top, the boy arrived with Georgina’s trunk.
“The guest room is along here,” said Fellowes.
“Where’s the master bedroom?”
“It’s not been touched since the Captain–”
“I’m simply curious,” Georgina said. “Where is it?”
“Along the landing, Miss, and there… blue door.”
“Excellent.”
Before Fellowes could do anything, Georgina swept along the landing and through the blue door. Fellowes shuffling stride sped up to try and intercept her, but he was too late.
“It’s not been aired,” he said.
“Bring me some light.”
“Miss?”
“And bedding, I shall sleep here,” Georgina said, and when the boy, a youth of ten or eleven, appeared and plonked the trunk down, she added, “Thank you, that will be all.”
The boy slunk out, smirking.
Fellowes looked reluctant. His hand moved with indecision making the lantern shift the great path of light that shone into the room to illuminate the corner of a bed. Georgina moved across the room and sat there.
“Miss, I really think…”
Georgina gave a tiny smile, thin, and very like Earnestine’s.
Fellowes wavered.
“That would be lovely, thank you. Fellowes, is it?”
“Yes Miss.”
He disappeared, scurrying away.
Georgina mouthed ‘Ma’am’ after him, then she felt rather foolish and very like Charlotte.
The door closed slowly and, sitting still, she realised how cold it was in the room. The wind whistled outside, howling suddenly in the echo chamber of a chimney before returning to a low murmuring, and a tree scraped across the window.
Even the light under the door had vanished.
This was Arthur’s room, she thought, and it would have been their room. She could not feel his presence, smell his aftershave or hear his heart beat as she had when he’d held her to him. She seemed to be sitting on a raft adrift on an immense black river, while at the same time the darkness enveloped her as if she were in a tomb.
The light flickered under the door frame and Fellowes knocked.
“Come in.”
Fellowes had a pair of candles in brass holders. He set one upon a dresser and the other on a bedside table. The room slowly came to life. There was a military jacket hanging outside the wardrobe, shaving equipment laid out on the dresser, as well as pictures and knick–knacks. She touched his aftershave jar, smelt her fingers and almost conjured up the time they’d met, the long railway journey and that one night together.
The sheets weren’t fresh but they weren’t musty: “This will be fine.”
“Miss… I… really, you can’t.”
“Goodnight, Fellowes.”
She ushered him out, closed the door and leant against it to sigh her utmost. It had been a long day.
She undressed herself; it wouldn’t do to call a maid as she might join forces with the butler and she’d be in the guest room.
She snuggled into Arthur’s bed.
Arthur’s bed, the thought was intoxicating.
There were two books on the bedside table: Wisden’s Cricketers’ Almanac edited by Sydney Pardon and Bleak House by Charles Dickens. The latter had a bookmark betraying a lack of progress. She would read it, she thought, but use a different device to keep her place. There was another book, which had a blank cover and also empty within, or at least where Georgina opened it. Flicking to the front, she found Arthur’s handwriting. It was a journal. The last entry talked about going to London, called in by Major Dan and looking forward to a possible adventure. She had been part of that adventure.
She felt that familiar lump in her throat again.
She decided then to continue the journal.
There was a fountain pen in the drawer and she fished this out, a couple of shakes and it wrote. She wrote the date, neatly, and then began an entry: ‘I, Mrs Arthur Merryweather, continue this journal. Upon arriving at Magdalene Chase, after travelling across country on the 11:23 from Paddington, it was dark and–’
The candle guttered, its flickering light warning her of impending darkness. Georgina capped the pen and closed the journal.
When she returned them to the drawer, she noticed a daguerreotype of a beautiful young woman, almost animated by the flickering light, who smiled with her head tilted alluringly and–
Georgina snatched up the picture: who was this woman, this harlot, this strumpet to so litter Arthur’s bedside cabinet?
She replaced it very deliberately with her face looking down at the varnished teak.
The light went out.
She slept, worried, and envious of her sisters, who were still safe at home. ‘Bleak House’ seemed an appropriate choice for this cold forbidding place.
Miss Charlotte
When the strange men finally left, there was a dreadful silence almost as if they had removed the air’s ability to transmit sound, and then, all too suddenly, the wailing began and it just didn’t stop. It stayed like that until the gin ran out, and then it became worse.
“Ruination!” cried Madam Waggstaff, flapping her arms above the unconscious Mr Waggstaff.
Three Gentleman Callers were turned away by the… Charlotte realised that these similarly dressed, if ‘dressed’ was the right word, girls were strumpets. The arrested man had thought she was one too. If only Charlotte could figure out what that meant?
“Temporal Peelers!” Madam Waggstaff reminded them. “Here! Ruination!”
When Mr Waggstaff regained consciousness, Madam Waggstaff thanked the Lord, the heavens, and Mary, the Mother of God, and more angels than Charlotte could have named. The big burly man, once his wits were restored, shouted incoherently, using words that Charlotte didn’t understand. They sounded coarse and she realised that each could be substituted with the b–word, so he was most likely one of those foul mouthed ne’er–do–wells that the papers were so fond of complaining about. Finally, fed up with the bawling explanations, he struck the nearest girl a
nd retired to his armchair.
Little Dove, one of the strumpets, was sent out with a shilling for more gin and when she returned it all quietened down. Come ‘chucking out’ time, no Gentlemen Callers even rang the doorbell and so – ruination, ruination – it was all apparently over.
“Word has got around!” Madam Waggstaff explained to the ceiling.
Charlotte made a pot of tea.
Madam Waggstaff took a sip: “There’s no gin in this.”
Charlotte made a face in reply.
“Gin’s horrible,” she said.
Charlotte stormed off to find a bedroom with a better perfume than the one with the spilt piss pot. The one she found didn’t have a number on the door either. She smelt the sheets, wrinkled her nose up, and then found fresh linen. She remade the bed as if she were a domestic, jammed a chair under the handle and went to sleep.
Or rather she lay under the covers and thought hard.
For the whole of the previous day, she had pretended to understand French tenses. What vexed her now was the phrase the man in the top hat, Chief Examiner Lombard, had used. He had said ‘He destroyed the world’. Not something like ‘he will destroy’ or ‘he attempted to destroy’ or any of the other multitude of options listed on pages 2–14, 17 and 23–45 of her textbook. He’d used the passé composé or the passé historique or… whatever: the past tense.
However, manifestly, the man had not destroyed the world. The world still existed and continued to turn, albeit in a confusing and perplexing manner.
She also realised that she couldn’t go and join the French Foreign Legion. Partly because it was French and so all her friends, the cadets, wouldn’t talk to her any more, but mostly because she’d only managed to travel seven miles and the desert forts depicted in the penny–dreadfuls were so much further than that. She couldn’t go return Zebediah Row because Earnestine would send her back to school, where the Reverend Long would cane her and Miss Cooper would give her lines. Also, having assumed a life of adventure and excitement in the desert, she hadn’t bothered to even start her homework.
There were mysteries here too: that horrid man’s arrest and the disappearance of Uncle Jeremiah. It would be exciting to solve the puzzle and it could even be an adventure, providing Earnestine didn’t find out, forbid it and thus spoil everything.
