Nine
Working here in Whitechapel, Jon had been prepared to find himself among like-minded people, which of course he did. This part of the East End now included any kind of political activist you could name. It was fruitful ground for seeds of discontent to grow and flourish, nourished by the sort of propaganda the Voice was intended to put out. Fiercest in the midst of this melting pot of different ideologies were the escapees from the bloody but unsuccessful Russian revolution of 1905, who had nothing to lose and to whom human life meant less than nothing.
‘That is true,’ agreed Lukin. He was the owner of the Voice, a big, blond Russian with wide cheekbones and light blue eyes. ‘It is sometimes necessary, even to take the life of a Tsar,’ he had shrugged, totally uncomprehending of the British enthusiasm for the forthcoming crowning of a king. The Tsar he was referring to was the Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias who had been assassinated by a bomb – twenty years ago, but not in any way forgotten, Jon reflected. Nor for that matter had it succeeded in halting the hated and repressive Tsarist rule it had been meant to bring to an end.
He had no idea who Aleksandr Lukin was, apart from being a man educated enough to speak the fluent French that was used by the nobility of his homeland as being more elegant and sophisticated than the barbarous native Russian spoken by the backward, illiterate peasants. His English, too, was excellent. Jon supposed, without any basis for the supposition, that he had been born into the ruling classes, but about what had led him into exile he could only speculate. Lukin gave away nothing on that subject.
Nor had the precise nature of any beliefs held by the owner of the Voice been made apparent when he and Jon had first been introduced. He thought now that the Russian had been careful not to make them too evident. Seemingly wealthy, he had only made it known that he wanted a British editor for his new venture, someone capable of putting radical ideas forward to the British public without using the violent rhetoric of his own compatriots. He had discovered that far from influencing those who were in a position to support their cause, that sort of inflammatory language served only to give reactionary English politicians and those otherwise in power a reason to dismiss such. Jon, delighted to have been approached, eager to throw himself into something he considered worthwhile, had not, with hindsight, given enough serious thought to what might be expected of him. Although by no means averse to stirring up and urging strike and protest for the basic human rights of better wages, shorter hours and decent living conditions for working people, he was no anarchist. Unlike them he had no wish to see the state abolished, and it was becoming apparent that these lukewarm beliefs did not go far enough for Lukin. He had recently hinted at the possibility of closing the paper down if circulation didn’t improve – if Jon’s future editorials didn’t have more fire. He was in any case considering the possibility of returning to Russia.
This Monday morning, however, after the traumatic events of the weekend, as Jon stood looking out of the second floor window on to the busy street below, his thoughts were not concerned with the growing problem of his association with Lukin. He was eaten up by guilt.
The office, and his own sparse living accommodation, was situated on the second floor above a pie-maker’s shop. On the first floor lived the pie-maker himself, his wife and three children, while the attics above were the occasional venue for meetings of what Jon had discovered to be a group of hard-drinking Latvians. From his vantage point, he could see along the length of the street, its tall, narrow buildings housing shops and stalls at street level, a decent enough street for these parts, but which hid the maze of filthy, squalid tenements, noisome, narrow alleys and dark courtyards that crowded behind it, where no one was safe and policemen walked in twos. Already the street was thronged – though not yet as congested as it would later become – with people going about their concerns, and the business of the day already well under way. Electric trams clanged and swayed along their rails, cleaving their way through the busy traffic of horse-drawn carts and motorised delivery vehicles. Bicycles – an unimaginable luxury for most people in this part of London – were notably absent, and the only private motor cars were those passing through. Today Jon couldn’t summon up his usual lively interest in what was going on; he barely noticed as two ragged-trousered street urchins, each clutching an apple and chased by a shouting stallholder, dodged between the traffic and knocked into a thin-chested errand boy pushing a handcart piled high with fresh bread. The lad staggered, the cart tipped and spun across the cobbles. In the consequent brouhaha the grinning urchins escaped, giving cheeky gestures and followed by a string of invective from all sides. The bread cart was righted and the loaves picked up – doubtless to be wiped off and sold – and the usual cheerful, noisy life of the street resumed.
Jon remained where he was in front of the window. He had taken off his jacket and his hands were thrust deep into the pockets of his flannel trousers, his shirtsleeves were rolled to the elbow, pencils bristled in his waistcoat pocket, ready for work. Yet the weight of sadness he felt was making him reluctant to move. Light footsteps sounded on the stairs and Nolly entered, in the grey coat and hat she wore to the office in the mistaken belief that it made her inconspicuous. On removal the coat revealed a businesslike striped blouse with a short tie, the blouse tucked into a dark skirt, tightly belted in stiff petersham. She was glowing, and had brought in with her a small bunch of sweet violets. She buried her nose in them. ‘Aren’t they heavenly? Too delicious for words! Old Anna was selling them and I simply couldn’t resist. I’d have liked her whole basketful but I thought I’d better not. I don’t suppose it’s likely you have anything I could put them in?’ she added doubtfully, belatedly realising the impulse might have been less than practical.
‘You might find a jam jar or something next door,’ Jon replied vaguely, gesturing towards his living quarters. As she disappeared, he moved over to his desk, where he thrust his hands through his untidy brown hair and then began to shuffle papers about a bit. When she came back, his head was bent over them.
‘Do smell, isn’t the scent divine?’ She wafted the violets under his nose before setting them down on her desk.
She had put them into a large cut-glass inkwell taken from a stand given to him along with a few embroidered cushions, pretty knick-knacks and other things he didn’t need, by his mother. The result only served to emphasise the shabbiness of everything else. Lady Devenish had not, of course, any idea what his rooms were like. Jon had been careful not to invite her here.
‘Mm, yes, lovely,’ he replied absently. ‘What’s happened to the ink?’
‘Oh, I poured it away. These sweet little things won’t last long, I’m afraid, so you’ll soon have the inkwell back. It was only the red ink, anyway.’ She beamed at him and uncovered her typewriter.
When she had first arrived, Olivia Brent-Paxton had instructed him that she was to be known as Nolly, the pet name her three older brothers had bestowed on her, one of whom had been a fellow undergraduate with Jon. It was he who had persuaded Jon to give her the job. ‘For God’s sake give her something to do! She’s driving us all mad since she came home from being finished in Switzerland. Too much energy and nothing to expend it on.’
Jon was in need of an assistant, but he said quickly, ‘Oh, I don’t think so, Pax, round here ain’t the sort of place for nicely brought up young women—’
Will had waved away the objections. ‘You’ll be here to see she’s all right. Anyway, you don’t know Nolly. She can take care of herself. And she’s a dab hand at organising,’ he added pointedly.
Jon was not efficient at keeping his papers – or anything else for that matter – in order, and in the short time he’d been here the one not very large room that comprised the office of the Voice had become crammed to overflowing, the walls papered with anything that needed keeping and for which there was no room on his desk or the floor. The residue sometimes overflowed into the room next door, where he lived.
‘Give her a try, old
chap,’ his friend pleaded. ‘Her heart’s in the right place – she’d love what you stand for. You won’t regret it.’
He owed Pax a favour – many favours – for getting him out of scrapes, waking him up in time for lectures after a rough night – and the rest. All the same …
‘Look here, I’ll bring her round, and you can see for yourself.’
‘I can’t promise,’ Jon said weakly at last.
He quickly saw what Pax had meant when he met her. The diminutive Miss Brent-Paxton was not at all shy, and within minutes was giving it as her opinion that she could cope with all this mess, and making several suggestions as to how it could be accomplished. Avoiding Pax’s grin, Jon was left with a dazed feeling that it was he who had been interviewed and that he’d had no option but to agree to employing her.
His reservations for her safety were soon put at rest. At first, she had arrived at the door in a taxi-cab and Jon had escorted her safely towards home at the end of each day. But the cab was fairly soon taken only as far as Aldgate, from where she made her way on foot to the office, making frequent stops to chat to the owners of shops and stalls on the way, buying bagels or warm latkes, honey cakes and pickled herrings, Polish bread, sausages and smoked cheese from the foreign food-sellers, which she insisted they shared at midday, correctly guessing that Jon existed mainly on pies from the shop downstairs. She had become a familiar figure in the street. Now that they knew who she was and where she worked, men touched their caps to her, women smiled, stallholders slipped her extra treats. Mrs Ostrowski, the old Polish woman who did what she could to clean amongst the chaos of the office and Jon’s quarters, was her slave within half an hour. And though he still escorted her to where she could take a taxi-cab home in the evenings, his first worries abated.
She had a whirlwind energy and a private life that Jon could only speculate on. He’d found it expedient never to answer the telephone himself when she was there, since it was just as likely to be one of her admirers, with whom she had giggling conversations. But she rapidly had the workings of the paper at her fingertips, chivvying Jon along to make sure it came out on time, deciphering the articles he tended to scrawl on odd bits of paper then rattling them out briskly, if sometimes inaccurately, on the noisy, second-hand Remington typewriter they’d acquired.
All the same, she was really a complication he could do without. He thought about her more than was good for him – like now, when his eyes constantly strayed towards her desk. As usual, her hair was scraped back anyhow for severity, but the effect she tried for was spoilt because the silky, dark curls refused to be confined by pins and constantly tumbled around her piquant little face. Enchanting. Distracting. Especially when she gave him her wicked, beautiful smile or said with a perfectly straight face something that made him laugh.
‘Shall I type this ready to take to the printers?’ she asked now, holding out a paper he’d left on her desk.
‘Mm, yes, I suppose so.’ She gave him a quick glance but said no more and resumed her typing, while he continued to watch her, the scent of the violets she’d brought in wafting across the room. She was quite without inhibitions, determined to be emancipated, and had declared herself in favour of free love. As the weeks went by it had fleetingly crossed his mind more than once to wonder how accommodating she might be if he were to suggest she move in with him, but his courage failed him there. She was, after all, the daughter of a rural dean, and despite her frank, uninhibited way of talking he was pretty certain where she would draw the line when it came down to it. Perhaps he ought to offer to marry her – though in the manner of St Augustine, not yet, he amended hastily. At any rate, in view of Lukin’s implied threat to close the paper he supposed he ought to get rid of her before it should happen, in fairness to both of them.
He became aware that the clatter of the typewriter keys had stopped and that she was looking at him with concern. ‘What’s wrong, Jon? Is it Lukin again?’ She did not care for Lukin and thought he harassed Jon.
‘No, it’s not Lukin, not this time.’ He fell silent. ‘You haven’t heard, then?’ he asked at last, unnecessarily, since it was quite evident she had not.
‘Heard what?’
He could scarcely bring himself to voice what had happened, the impossible thing that unfortunately was only too true. ‘You don’t know about my Aunt Lydia?’
‘No, what?’ He didn’t answer immediately. ‘Is it something too awful?’ she asked, her eyes wide.
‘It couldn’t be more awful. She’s – she’s dead, Nolly.’
‘Dead?’
‘She was shot yesterday by some madman while she was riding in the Park.’
The silence that followed his disclosure took him aback. He had anticipated sympathetic tears but not that she would also lose colour so rapidly. ‘Not … not Hyde Park?’
‘Which other park would she be riding in?’
She went on staring at him. ‘It … it wasn’t meant to be like that,’ she said faintly. And then she burst into tears.
The day before, Paul Estrabon’s Sunday afternoon had been disturbed by a distracted call from Lady Devenish, giving him the devastating news about Lydia, and the almost equally incredible information that the police had taken his partner Louis Challoner away for questioning. She hadn’t made much sense, but later that evening, when Paul telephoned back to enquire further about Louis, she seemed to be in more control, saying he was back home but firmly refusing to call him to the telephone. ‘He needs to rest, Paul. He’s been through quite an ordeal and he’s thoroughly shaken. Don’t expect him into the office tomorrow, either.’
Paul didn’t argue. ‘I’ll come round first thing in the morning. I won’t trouble him, but there are things we shall need to sort out.’
The next morning, his wife, Fanny, had broken the habit of fifteen years and had risen at the same time as he. It was unusual for her to be out of bed before eleven and unheard of for them to meet at the breakfast table. But the circumstances were hardly usual. It was not every day that one’s dearest friend was shot dead. Not every day that Fanny needed to catch her husband before he left for the office.
‘I scarcely slept a wink last night,’ she remarked, nibbling on a piece of toast.
‘Understandable, my dear Fanny,’ he replied absently, polishing off the last of his ham and eggs and reaching for the marmalade.
It was evident to Fanny that he did not appreciate the effort she had made to rise in time to breakfast with him, a meal he had heretofore eaten alone, his only company The Times. She observed him critically, this man she had married fifteen years ago and still didn’t know completely, perhaps not at all, she sometimes admitted to herself. This powerful, darkly handsome man, with brown eyes and very white teeth, all due to his Latin-American inheritance, far back as that was. A man who, when he was young, had given every impression of being possessed of a smouldering, passionate nature, when she knew (perhaps the only one who did) that he was really a cold fish, interested only in his business and making money which he was disinclined to share.
‘Don’t you simply hate being without money, Lydia?’ she had asked her friend not too long ago.
‘I can’t hate it because I’ve never been in that condition – not since I married Louis, at any rate.’
‘You can have no idea how fortunate you are not being married to a man who doesn’t spend a penny if he can help it – on his wife, at least.’
Lydia had heard this before. ‘But you have a lovely home, clothes – look at those diamond earrings Paul bought you for Christmas. He has never struck me—’
‘You simply don’t know, my dear.’
‘Well, I suppose he wouldn’t have chosen to be a stockbroker if he weren’t aware of money. Louis is, very much.’ She laughed. ‘They’re all as dry as dust in that direction.’
But Louis had never been remotely mean to Lydia, though she had been too spoilt to appreciate him. And she hadn’t taken the broad hint that Fanny so desperately needed a loan. Trying
to get money from her had been almost as bad as trying to squeeze it from Paul.
She toyed with her toast, plotting how she could get round Paul and persuade him to part with the money she must have. Not only for her gambling losses, of which he disapproved most strongly – which was shockingly unfair considering the far greater monetary risks he took every day, though that of course was with other people’s money – but to pay for the other expensive necessities for which she had run up bills here, there and everywhere, many of which could no longer be disregarded. An idea slid into her mind. Should she approach Louis and ask for the money Lydia had owed her? She was not a sensitive woman, but even though it hadn’t been much, in the circumstances she thought it would not be advisable. Louis Challoner, however generous to his wife, was not a soft touch. Unless … Her heart began to beat rather fast.
Nothing else came to her and as she watched Paul getting on so calmly with his breakfast she began to wonder, as she did rather too often nowadays, why he had married her. She knew why she’d married him – he had been very rich, and was still incredibly good-looking. Although he was the same age as Louis Challoner, in appearance he was ten years younger, mainly because he kept himself fit with regular exercise such as tennis and riding. At the time of their marriage, he had declared himself very much in love with her. But his attention had wandered after a few years. He had sworn his affairs were the sort of distractions men were expected to have and did not affect his feelings for his wife, and they had eventually managed to come to an agreement, but unsatisfactory to Fanny, at least. She had a jealous temperament and the rumours that reached her constantly stirred up emotions which could only be appeased by gambling at cards and spending exorbitant amounts on new clothes and other luxuries. Or by taking her revenge in malicious gossip of her own instigation.
She poured herself fresh tea. ‘Don’t you feel anything?’ she asked, eyeing him narrowly through the steam as she raised the cup to her lips. ‘Lydia was your friend, as well as mine. The wife of your best friend,’ she added carefully. ‘And what about Kitty? You’ve always said she feels like a daughter to you.’ They had never had children, something he had minded more than she had. ‘They were – almost family.’
The Firebird's Feather Page 8
