London Lodgings

by Claire Rayner

  ‘Oh, Eliza, what will become of us?’ Tilly cried. ‘My father gone God knows where, perhaps abandoning us and –’

  ‘Oh, pooh!’ said Eliza. ‘Men like him don’t go far from their mangers, and never you think it. He’ll be back when he’s over his skinful. I’ve no doubt he’s been drinkin’ hisself stupid and that’s all there is to it. He’ll be back, you mark my words.’

  ‘Oh, Eliza, I don’t know – and now this, with Alice and Freddy – that hateful woman! How dare she tell Alice such stuff.’

  ‘If you mean that there Mary Prescott, then you’re right,’ Eliza said warmly. ‘I’ve had fair cause to tell her a thing or two ’n’ all, prying around the way she does! I know her type, you believe me I do – she’s the spit image of the woman what lived next door to my Ma, in the village, knows more about everyone else’s business than her own, not that she’s got any of her own for she’s so pryin’ and hateful no one’ll call her friend. I sent that Mary off with a right blow on her ear, that I did.’ She nodded with great satisfaction. ‘Nothing ever surprises me about that one. She been makin’ trouble, has she?’

  ‘Oh, yes, so much! Telling Alice that – well never mind!’

  ‘Oh, I can imagine well enough!’ Eliza said cheerfully. ‘I know how she was when she came round here, askin’ questions about the way you and Mr Freddy was when he was visitin’ here and all! I told her stuff to make her hair curl, that I did, filled her with such rubbish and her believed it. Wicked old besom!’

  ‘You told her – what did you tell her?’ Tilly said, aghast. ‘Surely, you did not let her think that –’

  ‘I told her that he sat and stared at you like you was an angel and that you paid him no mind at all and never even noticed, that’s what I told her. If she wants to puff up her Madam the way she does, carryin’ on as though she were a very angel, she needn’t think I won’t defend mine and defend you I did, Mum, you believe me. I told her, straight out I did, as how you was above noticin’ how her precious master watched you and liked you.’ She giggled. ‘You should ha’ seen her face, Mum! Fair put out she was. Never come back, anyway. Now, I’m agoin’ down to fetch you some tea and then you sleep, Mum. You’ll feel better then.’

  Tilly closed her eyes. She couldn’t believe what had happened: that Alice should attack her so was amazing. That Eliza had been so partisan as to lead Alice’s maid to think that – oh, what was the point of rehearsing it all in her mind like this? Both she and Alice had been the victims of servants’ gossip, and though the talk in Eliza’s case was meant to be kind and was based on fierce loyalty, and in Mary’s had been malicious, the result was the same. Tilly and her only immediate friends, such as they were, were parted for ever. She could never rely on them again for any aid; and she closed her eyes and thought of Freddy. He had been so kind and so reliable. Who shall I turn to now in trouble? There is no one. I am alone.

  Her eyes snapped open then. Her father. Freddy had gone to seek her father and that meant when he came back he would wish to speak to her. He would return to his own house, expecting to find her there, and would find only Alice who would regale him at once with all that had occurred.

  She shook her head. It was impossible to know what to do or how to plan and she turned on to her side, curled up into a ball and slept. It was almost as though she had deliberately backed away from all conscious thought, taking refuge from the world and from reality in her sleep. I hope I never wake up, she thought as she slid over the barrier into emptiness. Never wake up. But of course she did. When Eliza came and touched her shoulder she emerged from the depths of a painful dream that left her feeling sick and frightened and unable to say why, for she had no recollection of its content and could only stare up at Eliza in the light of the candle she was holding, blinking and fearful.

  ‘I had to call you, Mum, though I’d have rather left it till mornin’,’ she said. ‘It’s just that – it’s Mr Freddy, Mum. He’s downstairs and says he has to talk to you.’

  ‘No!’ Tilly and strongly, and pulled herself up against her pillows and held the bedclothes against her as though they were some sort of bulwark. ‘I cannot see him ever again.’

  ‘He says he knows you will be unwilling but it is important he speaks to you of your Papa. I think you’d better, Mum, on account that I think he’ll come up here if you don’t.’

  That got Tilly out of bed and she pulled on her wrapper and smoothed her rumpled hair over her ears and set her cap straight. She put a shawl about her shoulders to make herself more respectable and went down to her drawing-room, Eliza hovering at her elbow. Tilly didn’t need that sort of support, she told herself, but was glad to have it all the same.

  Freddy was standing on the hearth, staring down at the folded paper fan that hid the empty grate, and he turned his head as she came in and she saw that he was quite unsmiling.

  ‘I have to say first how much I regret the – um – disagreement between you and Alice about which I have been told in full. She now sees the error of her ways and is most distressed that you exchanged words you might have preferred to leave unsaid.’

  ‘I prefer not to speak of the matter,’ Tilly said.

  ‘I can understand that, and I must respect it. I shall speak only of – I am afraid I have bad news for you, Tilly. Please sit down.’

  She did, with a little thump and looked up at Eliza. ‘I shall be all right, Eliza,’ she said steadily. ‘You may leave me now.’

  ‘Oh, but Mum –, Eliza protested, but Tilly was adamant. She had allowed Eliza far too much leeway already. Her loneliness and uncertainty had led her into what she knew was a dangerous trap – making a friend of a servant. Doing so had already led her into problems with her social equals; she could not allow such a situation to persist. So she looked very steadily at Eliza and shook her head.

  ‘I shall be perfectly all right, Eliza. This is a matter that I wish to discuss with Mr Compton in private. Please leave us.’

  Eliza looked puzzled, then her face crumpled and she bobbed and went away and Freddy took a deep breath.

  ‘That was wise,’ he said. ‘One forgets how much harm –’

  ‘Yes,’ Tilly said and folded her hands, which were trembling now, on her lap. ‘If you will tell me about my father, please?’

  He turned away and looked down at the fireplace again. ‘I checked at his club,’ he said. ‘They told me they had not seen him at all this past week.’

  ‘Not seen – but where else could he be?’ She felt terror rising in her. ‘It is not possible that he was not there. Perhaps the person you asked happened not to see him or –’

  ‘No, it is quite true.’ Now he looked at her. ‘I have found him, you see. He may have set out to go to his club but he did not reach it.’

  ‘What happened? Oh, Freddy, please do tell me! What happened?’

  ‘I went to the hospitals all around London, and I found him in one of them. In the Charing Cross Hospital, in fact, hard by the railway station, you know? At the end of the Strand.’

  ‘In hospital? Oh, Freddy how – what for? Was he injured in some way? Such a terrible place to be.’

  ‘He was, it seemed, caught by an apoplexy. He is in a pauper’s ward. They did not know who he was, you see. He was found lying in the gutter just off Endell Street. They cannot say why he was there.’

  ‘But not to know who he was! That is absurd – why, he carries so many papers and so forth about him, he always has. They had but to look in his pockets and –’

  ‘They did. He was found by a night watchman who said he had been turned over completely.’

  ‘Turned over?’

  ‘Robbed. They thought at first he had been set upon by some sort of cut-purse or street hooligan, but when they examined him it was clear he had been struck down by an apoplectic attack and that probably some passer-by had seized the opportunity to steal all he had. Indeed, he was fortunate they did not strip all his clothes from his back. It has been known – there are bad people in Seven Dials an
d thereabouts. It is understandable enough, I am afraid, for they are very poor there. I cannot imagine why he was in such a district.’ His tone was careful and delicate but there was a question in it.

  ‘He may have been looking for her,’ Tilly said, her head down and her voice a little muffled. ‘Mrs Leander. He was very distressed at her departure.’ She lifted her head and looked directly at Freddy. ‘I think he truly cared for her. And we sent her away.’

  There was a silence then and Freddy looked back at her with that flat look on his face in which she could read nothing, and she bit her lip and looked away.

  ‘I just wanted life to be better,’ she said. ‘Mrs Leander made it all so – I thought that without her it could be different – and now this. Oh God, when will I do something right? First Frank and now this – I must be the wickedest person in the whole world.’

  ‘That,’ said Freddy vehemently, ‘is pernicious nonsense. I will not hear you speak so. You have been tragically unfortunate, but you are not to blame for what has happened! Frank was the one who drank so much he lost all sense of himself and fell to his death. Your father’s misfortune can hardly be laid at your door, since apoplexy is an act of God. Nor indeed, can I be blamed. That woman was truly a bad person, and it was right and proper that she should be told there were those who knew of her past and who – well, let it be. I shall not discuss it. But I do insist that you must not blame yourself for what has happened.’

  ‘How can I not blame myself?’ she said. ‘Does not everything I touch turn to misery? There is even you and Alice. You were so happy and now because of me you are disagreeing and –’

  ‘What can you know of what happens with Alice and me?’ he said in a low voice. ‘You have no knowledge at all. Our marriage is a matter for ourselves alone. You can’t be blamed because Alice was foolish enough to listen to a jealous servant. The woman has a deep attachment to my wife and is as jealous of me as she is of anyone who comes near Alice. She has been with her many years now – since long before our marriage in fact – and that is why she is so, well, it is she who is my problem, not you. I will not have you blaming yourself, you understand me? I will not.’

  She glanced at him and was startled. He was not smiling but he did not have that heavy look she was accustomed to seeing when he was serious. He was slightly flushed about the nose and cheeks, and could have looked a little ridiculous, his expression was so intense. But instead he looked concerned and comforting in his distress for her, and she ached to be able to relax and be as they had been before, friendly and cheerful together. It would have helped so much.

  She looked away, silent for a moment, and then shook her head. ‘It is kind of you to be so concerned,’ she said. ‘But I must be permitted to know what is best for myself, I believe. Now, tell me,’ and she stiffened her shoulders with resolve, ‘about my father. His condition is –’

  ‘Parlous,’ he said after a moment. ‘He is quite unconscious and has some signs, the surgeon told me, of pneumonia. This is not surprising, considering he was lying in the street for some time before he was fetched into the Charing Cross Hospital.’

  ‘I see.’ She stood up. ‘I must go to him then.’ She moved towards the door. ‘Thank you for your care of me, Mr Compton. I appreciate it. I shall not disturb you again, I promise. Do tell Ali – your wife – that I greatly regret any disturbance to her peace of mind and can assure her that there will be no further cause for concern for her from any action of mine. Good-night, Mr Compton.’

  ‘Mr Compton?’ he protested. ‘But we have been on better terms than this.’

  ‘Mr Compton,’ she said firmly. ‘Good-night. And goodbye.’ She walked out of the room, leaving him standing on her hearthrug looking as heavy of expression as she had ever seen him.

  Chapter Eighteen

  THE NEXT FEW DAYS were perfectly dreadful. The sight of her father with his face twisted to one side and his sunken cheeks, looking a great deal worse than her mother even though they had both been stricken with the same disease, was quite horrifying. She stood at the foot of the bed in the huge malodorous room at Charing Cross Hospital, where men lay in serried ranks of beds and cried and whimpered in a way that made the back of her neck creep with horror, and tried to recognize in the wreck of humanity that lay beneath the rough sheets the man who had so dominated her life. But it was impossible. All that lay there was the shell of Austen Kingsley. She looked at him more closely and the nurse, a rather slatternly woman standing beside her, said sharply, ‘Well, Ma’am? Is this man known to you?’

  She nodded dumbly, for although he looked so altered there was no doubt in her mind that this was her father; and the nurse said, ‘Well, Ma’am, I must tell you that his state is poor. Yes, very poor. Moribund, in fact. You hear the way he is breathing?’

  Tilly was indeed very aware of the way he was breathing; short, shallow little breaths and then a few deep intakes accompanied by the most unpleasant rattling sound in the throat and she knew perfectly well what it was before the nurse told her.

  ‘That is the death rattle, Ma’am, I regret to tell you. It is sad it should be so, but we must commit ourselves to the ways of the Lord. He will be dead by dawn, I have no doubt – and I’ve seen a dunnamany cases of this sort.’ She went away and left Tilly to stand and stare at what was left of Austen Kingsley, without so much as a chair to sit upon.

  Another nurse eventually fetched her a stool and again left her alone, and there she sat not just till dawn, but for two more days, waiting for her father to die. He did not move or show any awareness of where he was, but lay there making that dreadful sound in his throat for hour after hour, until she thought she would scream. At which point she would get to her feet and take a turn around the corridors outside the big ward. One of the nurses of a kinder disposition had fetched her a cup of chocolate from time to time, which helped her greatly, and someone who was visiting another patient, a pleasant old woman, took pity and shared her small collation of bread and jam with her. But for the rest she just sat and waited.

  It came so quietly and in so casual a manner that she hardly realized it. She was sitting there, her hands in her lap, trying to arrange her back and shoulders in such a way that she could relax, and not be at risk of falling off the stool if she became sleepy – as she often did – when she became aware, as one is aware of a slowly developing toothache, of a nagging something that was bothering her and could not think what it was. She lifted her head and looked at her father on his rough grey linen pillow beneath the coarse red blanket and was about to glance away again when she realized what it was. The noisy breathing had not restarted the last time it stopped.

  She had become used to that, the way the breaths came in little runs and then seemed to cease altogether before starting up again with a deep noisy intake. But this time the restart had simply not happened and Austen Kingsley lay there, quite dead. And she hadn’t noticed it happen. She had no idea at all at what time his soul had passed from the shell that lay before her, and that realization made her shake with horror.

  Not so the surgeon. The nurse whom Tilly ran to fetch showed not an atom of emotion; and the surgeon who came to look at Austen made a most perfunctory examination.

  ‘Dead,’ he said. ‘You can deal with him now.’ He nodded at Tilly and walked away, leaving her feeling quite useless and also numb. She had no feeling left at all, she realized. Only fatigue.

  Mechanically, Tilly made the arrangements with the hospital, and with the undertaker who was fetched by the mortuary attendant (and how he was to be paid, heaven only knew!) and left for home at last, determined to send Eliza away so that she had at least one mouth less to feed.

  But she found Eliza far from her usual obliging self.

  ‘If I didn’t leave you before, Mum, I don’t see no reason why I should now,’ she said mulishly. ‘I don’t want no money nor nothin’. I’ll be happy enough to work like I always did and wait till it’s all sorted out with your Pa’s will and all.’

 
‘Eliza, you must understand!’ Tilly leaned across the kitchen table to stare up at Eliza, who was standing on the other side with her arms folded across her chest in a most intransigent posture. ‘I have no money at all. I have looked, since my father’s death, in every part of his study, but there seems to be none there that I can see. There was none on his person.’

  She swallowed, aware of a sudden return of the distress she had been battling with these past three days. ‘So there it is. I cannot feed us, for I used all the money I had to go to the hospital to see my father and to – I had to pay something to the mortuary attendant.’ She swallowed again. ‘It was so little that I was ashamed, to tell the truth. But I have nothing left at all. I have sent a message to the lawyers to tell them of all that has befallen and they will no doubt be in touch with me to set matters straight. But until then I cannot possibly employ a servant.’

  ‘But Mum, ain’t I your friend now?’ Eliza burst out. ‘Ain’t I bin with you through terrible times and helped all I could? Ain’t I showed you every way I know ’ow as I likes it here and cares about you?’ Suddenly she was sniffing and gulping, as her eyes brimmed with tears.

  ‘Oh Eliza, don’t weep please, or you will set me off,’ Tilly cried and Eliza at once took a deep breath and wiped the back of one hand ferociously across her face as if to punish herself.

  ‘Well, Mum, don’t you go sayin’ that you’ll send me away then!’ she said. ‘Where can I go anyway? My Ma, she won’t want me back even if I wants to go, for she’s got the little ‘uns to feed an’ all. And though I’ve learned a lot I still couldn’t get no place anywhere else except as a scullery maid and I’d sooner stop here and be the maid of all work an’ take care of you than that.’

  ‘Oh, Eliza, this really won’t do, you know!’ Tilly sat back in her chair again and surveyed the girl helplessly.

  ‘What won’t do, Mum? I’m happy to do it, truly. And anyway, Mum, you can’t manage, not on your own! Not with your Ma and all. ’Oo else but me knows how to turn her and clean her up like? Eh, Mum? I been doing it ever since I come here. That Mrs Leander, she never did much of that, you can be bound, and Mrs Cashman, well, you couldn’t get her out o’ the kitchen! You couldn’t manage her alone, Mum, so I got to stay – it don’t matter about the money.’