“A wolf! Now you’re being fanciful,” said Ruby, though she could understand the comparison quite well. “Look, we must get you inside the building quickly, so let’s talk no more of it.”
With that, Ruby lifted her skirts and hastily led the way across the road towards the bakery, before a horse and carriage was upon them.
“But, Ruby,” Pearl persisted, even as they stood in the recessed doorway and her dear friend turned the door handle. “How much more thrilling would it be to fly in the air and be paid for the privilege, instead of you working all your days here with Uncle Arthur raging, or me on my hands and knees polishing fire grates before the dawn?”
Ruby’s emotions felt raw and tattered.
What Colonel Cody had suggested was a beautiful dream, that they could talk over and whisper of in the attic these next few long months, till Pearl could safely move on.
But it was not reality, Ruby knew.
The reality was, Father had bound her to servitude with her uncle.
The reality was, folk in travelling shows might never see their loved ones and families for years.
The reality was, Aunt Gertrude would never consider it seemly to work in such a profession as theatre.
But Ruby said none of that.
What was most important in her mind was to smuggle Pearl to the safety of the loft, while Uncle Arthur snuffled and snored drunkenly upon the parlour settee, after his Sunday traditions of doing the accounts and spending some of the week’s profits in the Three Compasses over the course of the afternoon.
So instead, she simply shushed her friend as they went into the small entrance hall.
“Won’t you even think about it, Ruby? They pack up and move on tonight!” Pearl urged her, talking softly over her shoulder as she lightly trod on the first few steps of the staircase.
Ruby, attempting to close the front door as quietly as she could, turned her attention to her friend, and lifted a finger to her lips. But then she looked up and saw what Pearl did not.
A hulking figure turned at the top of the staircase.
His eyes were bloodshot with booze; a slick of alcohol-induced sweat sat about his fat face and thick neck.
He was later back from the public house than expected, and his heaving breath showed that the climb to the apartment above the shop had been a slow, laboured and unsteady one.
“Pearl!” Ruby called out without thinking.
“What is this?” Uncle Arthur demanded, swaying slowly. “Why do you dare take this miss back to your lodging, Ruby? And why … wait— Pearl, you say? PEARL, you called her? Have I been duped? MADAME! GERTIE!! Get yourself out here, NOW!”
His great girth rocked as he raged, his blurred stare aimed into the apartment.
“Come here and explain yourself at ONCE, woman,” he ranted on, “or you’ll be feeling a lot more than the back of my hand when I get hold of you. And if you end up in the hospital, you’ll only have yourself to blame! Gertie! GERTIE! D’you HEAR me?!”
“I hear you,” said Aunt Gertrude, appearing in the doorway at the top of the stairs, her face grey, hot spots of pink panic high on her cheekbones.
“Come inside,” she said flatly, tight-lipped, holding out a hand to her husband.
Uncle Arthur drunkenly stumbled, grabbing hold of her arm as if his legs might give way, his dopey head swinging low as if he studied his feet and wondered what they might be for.
In that moment, Aunt Gertrude used her free hand to wave to Pearl, trying to signal that she needed to hurry, to get herself to the loft as quickly as possible so Aunt Gertrude could deal with the situation.
Pearl did as she was bid, scurrying as fleet-footedly on the stairs as she was able, hoping, perhaps as they all must, that Uncle Arthur was so soaked in ale that – like so many of his kind – he might collapse in a stupor and wake with no memory of anything that might have passed since several tankards of beer ago.
As for Ruby, her breath was quite gone, her senses frozen at her own stupidity at using Pearl’s real name. She stood at the foot of the stairs, gazing up, wishing what she saw was not happening.
She was only vaguely aware of the draught coming in from the street, the door behind her not closed properly.
She was only vaguely aware of the shy rap of knuckles on the door and the startled “Oh!” of Billy’s voice, as he came looking for his wages but found quite an odd scene altogether.
Pearl – petite as she was – was trying to fold herself flatter, to edge around the wobbling largeness of Uncle Arthur before he registered her presence.
“Come inside? COME INSIDE?!” Uncle Arthur suddenly yelled, lifting his head to spit the words in Aunt Gertrude’s face. “Who are you to tell me what to do, woman! And how dare you take THIS one into my home, to FOOL me, when I expressly forbade…”
Ruby’s heart practically pounded out of her chest as she watched her uncle jab his clenched fist into Pearl’s collarbone, sending her thudding against the wall.
The force of his blow was hard and cruel, and could have easily broken a bone.
But the force of it too had a very different effect.
As Uncle Arthur pulled his arm back to repeat the punch, his balance quite deserted him.
Quick as Dolly Shepherd’s balloon had lifted up, up, up from the grass in the grounds of Alexandra Palace, Uncle Arthur fell backwards and tumbled down, down, down the flight of stairs, legs, arms and head hitting the walls as he went.
Ruby jumped back, thundering into Billy as her uncle’s bear-like body landed in a strangely positioned heap at her feet.
Out of all of them, in the quiet shock of the moment that followed, it was Billy who spoke.
“Oh! You have killed him!” Ruby heard him yelp, his hot, frightened breath on her shoulder.
Her eyes fixed on Pearl at the top of the stairs, whose chest heaved with the pain of the blow she had received and the bewilderment of what just happened.
Then Ruby saw her friend clutch her hand to her heart, the hand that still held the calling card of Colonel Samuel Cody.
And Ruby saw in that instant that her and Pearl’s minds were as one.
Billy was no enemy of theirs, but no friend either.
His testimony to the police would be that Pearl was the cause of Uncle Arthur’s terrible fall.
And for a girl to have caused the death of a man … it would be the death of her.
Ruby stared at Pearl; Pearl stared at Ruby.
And then Ruby turned – shoving the startled boy out of the way – and ran.
A quiet thundering of small boots on the stairs made her glad, knowing that her glance had been understood, and that Pearl was just a few steps behind her.
Pearl caught up with Ruby once she’d crossed the road, darting between carriages, and her hand searched out Ruby’s as they ran through the little green surrounded by flower beds at the start of Hornsey High Street.
Pigeons flapped and soared as they hurtled by, hair flying, skirts flapping.
Perhaps one of them was Pearl’s pet, who’d flutter and flap around the closed attic window, and wonder why the kind girl and the delicious crumbs were no more…
The Story Behind the Story…
“Here, pass me the ribbon,” says Zephyr, holding his hand out.
I lean up off the futon and hand it to him, and then flop back down again.
The untied pages of Chapter Seven are spread out around me. We’ve read it through twice, totally wowed by what’s happened to Ruby and Pearl.
I’m feeling a bit knocked sideways by it, to tell the truth.
“Yeah, that works,” says Zephyr, tying the bells he’s taken out of Angie’s cage to the little catch on the open window in the attic.
He stands back, and we listen to them tinkle gently in the breeze, like a home-made wind chime.
Hopefully, it’ll sound like home to Angie.
It’s got Mr Spinks’s tail wag-wagging, so that’s a good sign.
Zephyr came up with the idea of th
e bell at the window when we were scrabbling inside and outside Angie’s giant cage for the latest instalment in The Pearl in the Attic. (It was tucked between two boxes of bird food.)
And now we can’t wait to get the next clue.
We have to read Chapter Eight, and find out what’s become of the girls. Did they get away? Or were they caught? Was Pearl tried for their uncle’s murder, with Ruby charged too, as an accessory to the crime… ?
My phone vibrates.
“Is it Patsy?” asks Zephyr.
“Yep!” I say excitedly, glad she’s texting me direct now that we’ve got each other’s numbers.
“What’s she saying?” he asks. “Tell her I’m kick-starting my brain cells and ready for action!”
My face falls, my heart sinks, when I see what comes next.
“‘Maybe there IS no Chapter Eight, sweetheart… Love, Nana xx’,” I read aloud. “What does she mean by that?”
Zephyr looks like he’s going to speak, then stops and frowns, only for his face to instantly light up again.
“Is Patsy testing us? Teasing us a bit?” he suggests. “I bet when we go in this evening, she’ll give us something else!”
“Yeah, but what do we do till then?” I say flatly.
Mum’s gone out to find a local print shop to get something crucial and last minute made up for her conference. Uncle Dean was complaining about a sore back after moving all the boxes and is now lounging in the bath with the radio and one escapee yellow duck for company.
Me and Zephyr could get on with moving more stuff, but Mum and Uncle Dean probably have a system.
Also, we don’t particularly want to do it.
“Let’s go visiting…” says Zephyr with a grin.
There’s a whole board of buzzers, but none of them has a name beside it.
“What are we meant to do? Press them all?” I say, feeling stumped.
The old people’s home was easy to find – the café lady gave us directions earlier.
Mr Spinks is with us. He had his nose to the ground practically all the way here, as if he was doing an impression of a search-and-rescue dog.
But his expert nose isn’t much use at sniffing out which buzzer will lead us to the right person. This stocky modern block looks like it’s split into individual small flats, and who knows which one we need to get to.
“Well, we could just randomly press a buzzer,” Zephyr suggests. “If it’s not him, we’ll just ask whoever answers which number Tom Blake lives at.”
“Or I could just tell you, but I’d need to know why you want to know,” says a deep voice behind us.
We turn to see a balding man who’s maybe about the same age as Mum and Uncle Dean, holding a bag of groceries and with a newspaper tucked under one arm. He’s scowling, probably thinking we’re trouble – two teenagers coming to harass the folk who live here.
“Our grandmother is Patsy Jones. She bought the bakers’ shop on the high street from Mr Blake a year ago,” says Zephyr, and I’m suddenly so glad of that forthright Australian way he has, instead of my English shyness. “We’d both really like to know more about the history of the place.”
The bald man narrows his eyes at us, maybe thinking it’s a ruse to wheedle our way in, or maybe wondering why two teenagers are more interested in social history than hanging out in the nearest McDonald’s or playing Mario Kart.
Then his face softens, and he begins to nod.
“OK, I’ll take you up. He’d enjoy talking about that…”
And so five minutes later, we find ourselves sitting round a small, square dining table, eating Hobnobs with a very frail but lovely man who’s clearly in his eighties, and looking at his family photos.
At first, they’re relatively recent and not too exciting; there’s a photo of Tom from a few decades ago, wearing a straw boater and striped baker’s apron and holding his chubby-cheeked grandson – who grew up to be the bald man who let us in downstairs.
But as Tom slides more photos out of the folder, it gets interesting.
“That’s like the photo you found online!” I say to Zephyr.
“Ah,” says Tom. “Good one, this. About 1947, I think it was taken. See the three boys? The oldest is me, the twins are my brothers. And there’s my dad, Joe, and my mum, Agnes. They took over the running of the bakery from my grandad Will and grandma Mary when they retired. That’s them.”
I stare closely at the various faces. Like the names Tom mentions, nothing really clicks. There’s no Ruby, no Pearl, no connection to Nana’s story here.
“Who’s the old lady who’s leaning on you?” Zephyr asks Tom. “She looks a bit stern!”
Tom laughs.
“She might have looked stern on the outside,” the old gentleman smiles warmly, “but she was a complete softie, was Auntie Gertrude. She wasn’t my real auntie; she ran the business with my grandad Will. She just became part of our family, since she had no one of her own.”
“We’ve read about her!” I blurt out. “Our grandmother wrote a story about her and the shop and her husband.”
“Ah, yes; the dreadful Arthur, wasn’t it? After he died, Gertrude gave my grandad Will the opportunity to train up as a baker and work alongside her. He’d started out as the delivery boy, but he saw his chance and did good!”
“Your grandfather was Billy?” asks Zephyr, clicking puzzle pieces together too. “’Cause he’s in the story as well!”
“Sorry, what story is this?” asks Tom’s grandson.
“My nana wrote this whole story about two girls who lived at the shop in 1904,” I tell him. “But we didn’t know if it was just fiction, or based on truth. She wouldn’t say.”
“Oh, you mean Ruby and Pearl?” says the grandson. “How did your nana know about them?”
Tom slaps his veined hand against his forehead.
“I lent your nana – Patsy, is it? – a long letter that Ruby wrote Auntie Gertrude about twenty years after they’d seen each other,” he says. “In it, Ruby described how she’d felt when she first came to live at the shop, and the events that took place after. I thought Patsy would find it interesting, since it was part of the history of the building. She promised to give it back to me after she read it, but I’ve just remembered she never did.”
So Nana used Ruby’s letter as the basis of The Pearl in the Attic. Where’s the original letter now in her rabbit warren of a house, I wonder? We have to return it to Tom…
“Was Ruby writing from jail?” Zephyr asks.
“Jail, good lord, no!” exclaims Tom. “What makes you think that?”
“I just thought Pearl and Ruby might’ve been caught, and charged with Arthur’s murder,” says my cousin.
“Oh, Arthur didn’t die,” says Tom’s grandson. “Not then, anyway! He was a bit bashed up from the fall, but he went on to live another … how long was it, Grandpa?”
“Enough to make Auntie Gertrude’s life hell for a bit longer!” Tom confirms. “Think it was the following winter that he died of influenza. Good riddance. Though my grandad Will – Billy as you know him – felt guilty all his life. He shouted ‘You’ve killed him!’, you see, as he was so shocked. And that frightened the poor girls off. They never saw their family again, never knew that they were quite innocent of any wrongdoing…”
“Really?” I gasp. “But what about the letter Ruby sent to Gertrude? Didn’t Ruby explain what had happened to them? Didn’t Gertrude write back?”
“Ruby didn’t leave a forwarding address – she might have thought it was still unsafe to say where they were. She only wrote that she and Pearl had gone and joined this touring show—”
“Colonel Cody’s,” I interrupt Tom. “That’s as far as Nana’s version of the story goes at the moment.”
“Ah, yes, well, that’s as much of the letter as I managed to save,” says Tom. “My brothers were mucking around and dropped the lot in a puddle in the yard. Auntie Gertrude was awfully good about it, considering. And she told me the last couple of pages just
talked about how Ruby and Pearl had toured with several different companies after Cody’s, and how they retired the act and were now quite settled somewhere, running their own little business. I think Ruby just hoped the letter would reach Auntie Gertrude and reassure her that they were both fine.”
“That’s so nice to know,” I say. “But a bit sad too…”
“I think they did all right, though,” Tom’s grandson says cheerfully. “I mean, we can’t prove that it’s definitely them, but when I came across this poster online, I had a feeling it was Ruby and Pearl. What do you think?”
Me and Zephyr turn where the bald man is pointing. Above a cabinet filled with ornaments is a large, old-fashioned poster in a clip frame. The writing’s in French, which I’m even worse at than Spanish.
But even I can understand the flowery headline that reads Voila! Le GEM GIRLS!
Below the wording is a drawing of two long-haired young women, smiling at each other as they hang by a trapeze attached to a balloon, a balloon that floats high above a crowd of people that are so small they’re dots.
“Ruby and Pearl; it makes total sense that they called themselves The Gem Girls!” I say, getting up for a closer look.
Zephyr’s already on his feet too, frowning at the poster. “It sounds sort of like I should know that somehow…” he’s muttering to himself.
“Do you mind if I take a photo of this?” I remember my manners and ask Tom.
His “Of course!” is drowned out by the sudden ringtone of my phone.
I frown; it’s Mum. She’s not my favourite person just now, so I almost don’t take the call.
And then I wonder if she’s got good news; has Angie heard the tinkle of her bell and come back home?
I mouth “sorry” at Tom and his grandson and quickly take the call.
And guess what; it’s not good news.
It’s just about the worst news I can imagine.
“Scarlet? Oh, darling; Nana’s gone missing…”
The Wait-and-See Game
The deal is, Mum and Uncle Dean have gone down to the hospital to find out what on earth has happened, while me and Zephyr are to wait in the flat, in case of … I don’t know.
The Pearl in the Attic Page 15
