Once More, Miranda

by Jennifer Wilde

  Wheels? Bloke wudn’t even makin’ good sense.

  “The characters were doing what you wanted them to do, not what they would do themselves—had they been real enough in the first place to have motivations and wills of their own. I could feel the author in the background, putting them through their paces.”

  “So you think I should give up writing,” I said.

  “Quite the contrary.”

  “Maybe I could go into a convent and do penance.”

  Sheppard chuckled, delighted. Whatever made me think he was a nice man? I stood up, cheeks a bright pink now. I might have the appearance of a young lady of fashion, but Duchess Randy lurked dangerously near the surface. Took all the control I could muster to keep from tellin’ him what he could do with his fancy criticisms.

  “I’d best be on my way, Mr. Sheppard.”

  “Writers,” he said, shaking his head. “They’re all so sensitive. I once made the mistake of telling Gordon one of his chapters needed a small revision. I thought he was going to murder me.”

  Pity he didn’t, I said to myself.

  “He turned pale and banged his fist on the desk and ranted for a good twenty minutes. Gave me quite a turn. Artistic temperament, I suppose it’s part of the magic. I suspect you have your share of it.”

  “I knew the book was bad, Mr. Sheppard,” I said heatedly. “I didn’t want you to read it in the first place. Unless my memory fails me, you practically wrested it out of my hands.”

  “That I did, and I’m very glad.”

  “Everyone needs a few chuckles.”

  “I want you to write a story for me, Miss James.”

  I gazed at him, utterly startled.

  “I should be drawn and quartered for attempting a novel, and you want me to write a story?”

  Sheppard nodded, ever so pleased with himself.

  “You’re not ready for a novel yet, that’s—uh—a little beyond your scope just now, too ambitious an undertaking, but you have a very genuine talent and I would like to be the one to develop it.”

  I sat back down, slumping against the back of the chair and forgetting all about poise and posture.

  “Genuine talent?” I said. “Me?”

  “I have the feeling that, were you to attempt something a little less difficult and were to write about a subject familiar to you, you could write a very good story indeed.”

  “You do?” I’m afraid it was a squawk. Mrs. Wooden would have thrown her hands up in horror.

  “I do, indeed. Would you be interested in trying?”

  “I dunnow. Writin’s ’ard as—writing is very difficult, an’—and I’d be scared to death, knowin’ you were going to read it.”

  “Nonsense,” he said.

  “The whole idea’s scary.”

  “As I believe I told you, I publish a number of magazines. Have you ever seen The London Reader?”

  I shook my head, still dazed. Mr. Sheppard moved behind his desk, opened a drawer and took out three of the most recent issues, bringing them over to me. I took them reluctantly, as though I were afraid they might bite.

  “The London Reader comes out twice a month,” he explained, “and each issue contains stories concerning various aspects of life in the metropolis. I’d like for you to read the stories in these issues and get an idea of how they’re done, then write one yourself.”

  “About London?”

  “There are stories about shopkeepers, stories about chimney sweeps, stories about dockhands and barristers and actors—about all kinds of people who live in the city.”

  “I don’t know anything about shopkeepers or chimney sweeps.”

  “Then write about what you do know,” he said. “The stories are relatively short, no more than fifteen or twenty pages. I’d be most interested in seeing what you come up with, Miss James.”

  “Even after readin’ my novel?”

  He smiled. “Even after that.”

  I stood up again. One of my fancy waves had come loose, spilling across my brow. I shoved it back and, plucking out a pin, pinned it back in place, dignity quite gone.

  “You’ll try?” he asked.

  “I ain’t makin’ any promises,” I said, forgetting every single thing Mrs. Wooden had taught me.

  I took the magazines home, however, and that night, while Cam toiled away in his study upstairs, I read several of the stories. The London Reader was an attractive, if unimpressive, magazine, printed on inexpensive paper and lavishly illustrated wtih woodcuts and engravings. Some of the stories were good indeed, some merely passable, some so tedious I couldn’t read more than one or two paragraphs. All of them featured a central character whose work or mode of living illustrated something about city life, and when I finally put the magazines aside, I knew I couldn’t possibly write anything Mr. Sheppard would find suitable. Shopgirls who sold ribbons and were swept to the altar by handsome bucks who discovered them behind the counter, chimney sweeps who were taken in by kindly old gentlemen, fishmongers who slit open oysters to find pearls and moved to the country—fairy tales all, written to please the public and, in my opinion, every bit as artificial and contrived as the novel I’d begun.

  The only London I really knew anything about was St. Giles, and there were no happy endings there, that was for bloody sure. Wouldn’t do me much good to write about that, would it? Pickpockets and whores, ruffians and beggars, children who starved or went blind from gin—not exactly the stuff fairy tales were made of. Mr. Sheppard meant well and I appreciated his interest, but I would be much better off copying Cam’s work, helping him with his spelling and putting all ideas of writing out of my head. For the next few days I did just that. Cam was working so hard and producing so much that it was all I could do to keep ahead of him, making legible copies of those messy, scrawled-over pages. No sooner had I finished with one batch than he handed me another.

  Nevertheless, a worrisome seed had been planted in my mind, and I kept remembering the two small children I had seen coming out of the gin shop that day when the wild hog had left Fleet Ditch and came charging down the street pursued by a mob of women. Both children had been blond, the little girl holding her half pint of gin as though cradling a doll, and the mob of women had almost trampled them. I remembered the look on the little girl’s face when she dropped the bottle, and as the days passed it seemed to haunt me. A story gradually began to take shape, of its own volition, it seemed, for I didn’t dwell on it and was much too busy to give it any real thought. When I least expected it, when I was working with Mrs. Wooden or changing the bed linens or copying Cam’s work late at night, bits and pieces came to me, snatches of dialogue materializing, vivid images flashing in my head. I knew that little girl. I knew her history. I knew her fate. I had to write about her.

  A week went by, and one Thursday morning I opened my secretary and sat down and stared out the window. Mrs. Wooden had gone out to do some much needed shopping, so we would not be working, and Cam was fast asleep after working all night long. It was a gray day, the sky wet and threatening, the courtyard dim and shadowy without sunlight. Reluctantly, I took out paper and ink pot and quill. I sharpened the quill, delaying the inevitable. I straightened the paper, examining the watermarks as though they held immense fascination for me. I polished the paperweight and studied my fingernails and, finally, when I could delay no longer, I sighed heavily, dipped quill in ink and wrote a title across the top of a page: “The Gin Girl.”

  My little girl was ten years old and her name was Betty and she lived in a foul basement with her adored younger brother, her vicious, gin-sodden parents and two other families. It was Betty’s job to fetch the gin each morning, and she vowed that someday, somehow she was going to get away from St. Giles, take little Joey with her and make a better life for them. The gin she carries to the basement every day symbolizes to her all the evil and despair of the life around her. She refuses even to taste it. Despite the horror and squalor that are her daily lot, she is full of hope, her love for little Joey
sustaining her. When, one morning, her parents send Joey to the parish house to be apprenticed to a chimney sweep and inform Betty that she’s going to have to earn her keep as best she can, she takes her first sip of gin.

  I wrote rapidly, without even thinking of it, the words seeming to spill from the tip of my pen. I lived the story. I saw the rats scurrying over the floor, saw the damp brown mildewed walls of the basement and smelled the stench and heard the shrill voices brawling. I felt the pain when Betty’s mother hit her, and I felt that hopeless, bleak despair when she finally relinquished hope and lifted the bottle of gin to her lips. The story wrote itself—I was merely the medium through which it flowed—and five hours later I put quill aside and brushed the tears from my eyes. Shaken, depleted, I stacked the seventeen pages together, pushed them back and closed the secretary.

  Cam was awake. I could hear him moving around upstairs. He would be hungry. I went into the kitchen and made coffee and prepared food, and he came in looking fresh and rested. Seeing my expression, he paused, frowning, then asked me if something was wrong. I shook my head. I tried to smile. I continued to put food on his plate. His frown deepened, and he came over to me and I set the plate aside and threw myself into his arms and he held me close, crushing me to him.

  “What’s all this about?” he asked gruffly.

  “It—it’s nothing.”

  “You’ve been crying, haven’t you?”

  I nodded. “No—no reason. It’s just been such a gloomy day and I’ve been working so hard and—” I let the sentence dangle.

  “I’ve been driving you.”

  “You’ve been driving yourself.”

  “Almost done now. Another week, a week and a half at the most, and it’ll be all finished.”

  “I never realized what writing—what writing did to you, what it took out of you. I know now why you’re so moody and irritable, why you’re so distracted and remote.”

  He arched a brow. “Oh? And what brought on these amazing insights?”

  “I was just—just thinking about it, trying to understand.”

  “Poor Miranda,” he said in a deep voice. “You have a lot to put up with, don’t you? Moody, irritable, distracted, remote—and that’s not the half of it. We writers are a miserable bunch.”

  “I’m not complaining,” I whispered.

  “That’s a relief. Usually you do nothing else.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Usually it’s nag, nag, nag, all day long,” he teased.

  “Liar.”

  “I have a lot to put up with, too, keeping you in line.”

  “You’re lucky to have me, you sod.”

  He grinned and tilted his head and lowered it and kissed me, and then he sat down at the table and began to eat, forgetting all about me. There was a faraway look in his blue eyes as he thought about the chapter he was working on, and when he finished his food he got up and wandered out of the room without so much as a word, going directly upstairs to his work. After what I had experienced earlier in the day with my own writing, I was able to understand him much better, and I vowed to be more patient with his moods.

  The sun was shining brightly ten days later when I left the house to take the final chapters of The Spoils of Dowland to Thomas Sheppard. Having worked nonstop for almost forty-eight hours, poor Cam was in bed and claimed he had no intention of getting out for at least a week. I had been working almost as hard myself, copying the pages, feeding him, keeping him supplied with paper and fresh quills and constant cups of coffee, but I felt a wonderful elation as I went down the narrow passageway and stepped into the brightness and bustle of Fleet Street. He had done it. He had finished the book on time, and he had not left the house a single evening to meet those horrid conspirators. I told myself that he had finally seen the light of reason, that giving them that huge sum of money had been his final act, his last contribution to a hopeless, dangerous cause.

  Sunlight sparkled on the cobbles and reflected in the windows of all the shops. Carriages and lorries rumbled down the street, horses neighing, hooves clattering noisily. The color and vitality of Fleet was as invigorating as always, and I hurried along as briskly and purposefully as anyone else, carrying priceless pages that would soon be read by thousands, carrying seventeen more that would never be read at all. I had made a neat copy of “The Gin Girl,” and I would give it to Mr. Sheppard and he would be utterly appalled and that would be that. Writing the story had been a form of release for me, a means of expressing things that had been pent up inside for years. I had written about what I knew all right—the horror, the despair, the hopelessness endured by almost half the population of London—but I was quite realistic and knew people didn’t want the truth. They wanted pretty fairy tales or thundering, violent melodramas like the ones Cam wrote so adroitly.

  The bell tinkled merrily as I opened the door. The clerk greeted me effusively and kept me waiting for only a moment as he hurried to inform Thomas Sheppard of my arrival. I gazed at the shelves of lovely new books, longing to read them all, then followed the clerk back down the hall to the office. Sheppard smiled, took the manuscript from me, set it on the desk and took my hands and squeezed them tightly.

  “I knew you wouldn’t fail me,” he said. “My printers are waiting. The presses will soon be turning. The binders will be working overtime. Thousands of Roderick Cane readers will soon be devouring his new book.”

  “And Thomas Sheppard and Company will be raking in coins,” I added.

  “Quite true. Why do you think I’m so elated?”

  He grinned a pixie grin and squeezed my hands again, and I couldn’t help but smile. He told me that I looked exceptionally attractive. I thanked him. I was wearing a simple frock of deep blue cotton, and my hair fell in lustrous coppery waves. No elaborate coiffure today. No foolish airs. Sheppard said that a celebration was in order and asked if I would have a glass of wine. I shook my head.

  “I’d better not, Mr. Sheppard.”

  “I intend to send a case of the finest French to Gordon this very afternoon—must make a note of it. A little token of my appreciation. And how is he, by the way?”

  “Utterly exhausted. He claims he’s going to sleep for a week.”

  “And then, I trust, he’ll hop right out of bed and start working on yet another novel.”

  I smiled again. “You’re incorrigible,” I teased.

  “Merely greedy,” he replied, “and you, Miss James, how are you doing? Did you read the magazines?”

  “I read them, yes, but I’m afraid I could never write the kind of story you want, Mr. Sheppard.”

  He looked surprised, disappointed as well.

  “I—I did do a story,” I said hesitantly, “just to see if I could. I wrote it very quickly, much too quickly, but the words just seemed to pour out and—I should have thrown it away, I know, but I made a neat copy and brought it along just—just to show you how wrong you are about me.”

  “You brought it?”

  “It’s there, on top of Cam’s chapters.”

  Mr. Sheppard stepped over to his desk and cut the string and removed the brown paper and lifted the story from the large stack of paper. I immediately panicked. He wasn’t going to read it now! I glanced apprehensively toward the door, and Mr. Sheppard became very stern and businesslike and ordered me to sit down in a voice that brooked no nonsense. I sank into one of the deep leather chairs, vowing never to step foot inside this office again. Cam could deliver his own manuscripts—he’d done so before, hadn’t he? I would never be able to look Mr. Sheppard in the eye after he read those seventeen pages I had copied so carefully. He was reading them now, sitting behind his desk, a grim, critical expression on his face as his eyes moved over the pages in hand. He was going to hate it. He was going to detest every word.

  I tapped on the arm of the chair. I brushed imaginary lint from my deep blue skirt. I counted the books on the shelves and watched sunlight slanting through the windows and suffered acute agonies as he read
page after page and finally set the last one aside and looked up at me. He didn’t say anything. He removed his fine gold-rimmed spectacles and took out a large white handkerchief and dabbed at the corners of his eyes. He was crying. Jemminy! Was it that dreadful.

  “I don’t know what to say, Miss James.”

  “You needn’t say anything,” I assured him.

  He dabbed his eyes again and put the handkerchief back into his pocket and put on his spectacles. He stacked the pages neatly together and looked down at them and shook his head.

  “It’s one of the most moving stories I’ve ever read,” he said.

  “Moving?”

  “It’s full of compassion, full of anger as well, and it obviously comes straight from the heart. You know St. Giles. You know what life is like for those who dwell there. You’ve brought it all vividly to life. I’ve rarely read anything so graphic, so convincing.”

  “You—you like it?”

  “I’m overwhelmed, my dear.”

  He stood up and came around the desk, clasping his hands behind his back and pacing slowly in his habitual way.

  “I’m simply amazed,” he said.

  “So am I.”

  “I can hardly believe it was written by one so young.”

  I gripped the arms of the chair, leaning forward. “I wrote every bleedin’ word of it myself!” I cried defensively. “Cam ’adn’t even seen it. ’E dudn’t know anything about it!”

  Sheppard grinned, amused by my outburst. “I know you wrote it, Miss James. I merely meant that it’s a—uh—remarkable feat.”

  The publisher talked on and I gathered myself together and tried to recoup some vestige of dignity, irritated with myself for losing my composure and forgetting my speech, irritated with him for making me do so. He informed me that “The Gin Girl” wasn’t at all appropriate for The London Reader, was, as a matter of fact, much too good for that particular magazine. He would feature it instead in the next issue of The Bard, a far more prestigious publication, and he would pay me the generous sum of two pounds for the privilege of doing so. My ears pricked up at that.