Jubilee (Book 1 of The Poppy Chronicles)

by Claire Rayner

  ‘No! I’ve too much to say to you –’

  ‘Please, there’ll be such trouble! Suppose it is Basil or Claude – oh, I couldn’t bear it again! Please –’

  The cab was slowing down as the driver pulled on his reins and swore at the horse and almost in an agony of fear she pushed on Kid’s chest, making him move away so that he was out of the immediate pool of light thrown by the street lamp.

  ‘I’m not going,’ he said. ‘Let’s see who it is first. I’m not going –’

  The cab driver hauled on his reins more cruelly than ever and the horse stopped, rolling its great eyes as the bit caught its soft mouth, and the cab driver jumped down, leaving the reins on the horse’s back, and opened the door of the cab as she stood there not knowing what to do. To be out on the street at this time – it was dreadful for a respectable young woman. And here was – who? Basil or Claude she could deal with. A visitor she could not. But who would visit at this hour of the evening? And she caught her breath as the cabbie hauled a bundled shape out of the cab’s interior.

  ‘’Ere you are, guv’nor – safe and sound. Blimey, you is in a mess, ain’t yer? It’ll take me now till midnight to clean up after you, an’ no error. Cost yer, this will –’ Scolding steadily, the cab driver led the bent and shaking figure towards the steps and then caught sight of her standing there and called out, ‘Gawd, miss, ’ere’s a mess, if you like! This geezer’s bin took good an’ill and they put him in my cab, would yer believe? My bleedin’ luck! You work at this ’ouse, then? Can yer find your mistress ’n get ’er out ’ere and see to it someone pays me for bringing this back and for cleanin’ me cab?’

  ‘I’ll pay you,’ she said, and stepped forwards, fumbling in her reticule. ‘Here, I’ll take over. Papa? What happened?’

  He groaned, trying to stand up in the circle of the cabbie’s arm and failing. ‘Took ill,’ he gasped. ‘Bad oysters, I swear it. Bad oysters –’ And he retched and the cabbie made a face and pushed him up the steps towards the front door.

  ‘Better get ’im in before he starts casting up his accounts all over again,’ he said and reached for the doorbell. ‘Nasty, that’d be –’

  ‘No, I’ll open the door,’ she said swiftly, suddenly seeing how Freddy’s face would look if he came and found her out here. ‘No need to bother anyone till we get in –’ And she ran up the steps and with shaking fingers pushed her key into the lock.

  ‘Millie!’ Kid came running up the steps behind her. ‘Let me help. You can’t manage him alone –’

  ‘No!’ she cried, scandalized. ‘You can’t come in! Can you imagine what would happen? Here, cabbie, get him in and sit him down there – I’ll get Freddy – here, Kid –’ And with fingers that shook with urgency she unbuttoned her jacket and pulled it off, and dragged her hat from her head. ‘Here, take these. Don’t let Freddy see them – he’ll know I was out and he’ll tell tales. I’ll get them afterwards. Leave them in the area, on the steps – I’ll find them –’

  ‘No,’ Kid said and took the jacket and hat. ‘I’ll wait for you and give them back m’self. Come out as soon as you get him sorted out –’

  ‘I can’t –’

  ‘You’ll have to. I’ll wait for you –’ He looked over his shoulder at the street and at the cabbie, now staring at him with great interest. ‘You, take him in and be sharp about it –’ And he pushed the cabbie, still half carrying the groaning Mr Amberly, in through the door. ‘Millie, I’ll wait for you –’

  ‘Not in the street, for heaven’s sake! Someone will see you!’ she hissed.

  ‘In the park then,’ he said after a moment, watching over her shoulder as the cabbie at last relinquished his burden to a chair that stood against the wall. ‘Promise, or I won’t go! I’ll stay here and –’

  The green baize door at the far end of the hall began to open and in a fever of anxiety she cried, ‘All right! All right – the park. As soon as I can. Now, please go away!’ And he melted back into the shadows of the steps and she felt more than heard him disappear from sight behind her, just as Freddy put his head round the baize door, his mouth half open in amazement.

  ‘Freddy!’ She moved forwards with all the aplomb she could muster and stood beside her father. ‘The master is ill. This man – he is concerned about his cab. It seems it has been – ah – spoiled –’ She looked down at her father who was sitting leaning back, his face as grey as asphalt and sweating heavily, the front of his costly evening clothes bearing very disagreeable evidence of just how ill he was feeling. ‘See to it he has what he needs to deal with it and then come and help me fetch the master upstairs. Hurry now. And you –’ She turned to the cabbie as Freddie nodded, for once shaken out of his professional stolidity, and went back to the kitchen. ‘What is the fare that is owed to you?’

  ‘Arf-a-sov’ll cover it nice, lidy, takin’ into account the state o’ my cab,’ the man said, cocking a knowing glance at the hallway, and its costly furniture and decorations. ‘Not much to a flash cove like this one, is it, arf a sov?’

  ‘Nonsense,’ she said crisply. ‘Half-a-crown is more than enough. But because of the trouble you have been put to, I will give you twice that, and I am being more than generous.’ And she held out five shillings which she took from the pocket in her skirt.

  The man sniffed. ‘I’d ’a’ done better if the other geezer ’ad paid me,’ he said disparagingly. ‘’E looked like a sensible bloke, ’e did.’ He peered round. ‘Where’s ’e gone, then? It’ll take more’n one to get this ’un up these stairs an’ no error.’

  Her face reddened and she bent over her father to hide it, pretending to be anxious about him, though there was clearly no need. His colour was slowly improving and his breathing was loud and clear. ‘He was – he was just a passer by,’ she said. ‘And has gone –’

  A slow grin spread over the cabbie’s face. ‘Passer by, was ’e? Seemed a mite familiar for just a passer by, way ’e followed you up them steps.’

  ‘Listen,’ she said desperately, feeling the man’s knowing eyes on her, though she could not bring herself to look at him. ‘If you want your half sovereign you will have to earn it. When Freddy returns from the kitchen, help him take my father upstairs and you shall have the money –’

  ‘Fair enough,’ the man said heartily. ‘I knows when I’m on to a good thing, don’t I? I’ll ’elp you and you’ll ’elp me, an’ very nice too. All right, squire!’ And he turned his head as Freddy reappeared, a bucket of water and a bundle of rags in his hands. ‘You just shove that stuff outside an’ come back an’ I’ll ’elp you get this lump o’ misery up to his bed. It’s where ’e longs to be and where ’e ought to be, and where ’e’s goin’ to be.’ And with a vast wink at Mildred, he bent to take Mr Amberly by the shoulders.

  The next half hour was busy and unpleasant, as they settled her father in his room and undressed him and put him into his bed, at which stage she was allowed by the men to come in and wash his hands and face and chest and make him clean and comfortable. He lay there on his high pillows, still groaning, as she dealt with him and when she had finished, he opened his eyes and looked at her lugubriously from their bloodshot depths.

  ‘You’re not a bad girl, Mildred,’ he muttered, his voice still slurred, for clearly his indisposition owed as much to over-indulgence in brandy as to any oysters. ‘You got your uses. Not a bad girl, for all you look the way you do – got your uses –’ And he fell asleep as suddenly as a child and lay there snoring thickly, and she looked down at him and felt her gorge rise with revulsion.

  It was not just the look of him, with his mouth hanging open to show unappetising vistas of furred tongue and yellow teeth set in the middle of his sagging jowly face, nor was it the way the room smelled of brandy and scented soap and sickness. It was the anger that was in her that choked her. She had cleaned him up, made him comfortable, dealt with as unpleasant a piece of self-induced nastiness as any woman should ever have to deal with for a man, and all he could say was that �
��she had her uses’. No thanks for her efforts, no apologies, no regrets for making so disagreeable a vision of himself. Just another insult about the way she looked, that was all.

  With savage self control she collected the dirty towels and bowl and took them to his dressing room to deal with them, and then, turning the gaslight down to the quarter, went and peered through the adjoining door into her stepmother’s room. She was lying on her back too, snoring softly, and Mildred went over to stand beside the crumpled bed and look down at her.

  She had been a pretty woman once, Mildred thought, remembering the way she had appeared when her father had brought her to meet his motherless children: a slight and simpering thing with fair fluffy hair and round pale blue eyes and a china doll complexion, she had sat with a fixed smile and looked at the gawky fifteen-year-old Mildred, and as though she had said it aloud, Mildred heard the pity in her thoughts. A poor plain creature, Mildred Amberly, Maud had thought, pleased with her own undoubted charms; poor plain Mildred.

  And now she lay in a half-drunken sleep, reeking as ever of sweet sherry and with her pink and white cheeks collapsed and soft and a little veined over the cheekbones, and her body that had been so sweetly plump sagging with the efforts of her four childbirths and no longer so sweet. Did that hateful man in the next room tell her she ‘had her uses’? Did he ever thank her for what she did for him? I’ve never heard him do it, Mildred thought and stepped back as Maud stirred in her sleep and snorted softly.

  She stood outside on the landing, staring down the stairs at the hallway below. It was quiet and still again, for Freddy had sent the cabbie on his way – and heaven knows what tales the man had told to those avid ears! – and retired to his own part of the house. She was again free to do as she wanted. To stay here and go to bed or go down the stairs, and open the front door and slip out and run to the park to –

  To what? She stood very still and closed her eyes against the richness of the scene before them and tried to be honest with herself. To fetch my jacket and hat and then say goodbye for always, as I promised myself I would, and then just come back to this house where I will never be thanked for anything I do, nor loved nor admired. Out there in the darkness of Hyde Park there is waiting for me a man who does admire me. Who, perhaps, loves me. I don’t know, but perhaps – he missed me, he said. Missed me something awful, and her lips curved as behind her closed lids she saw the woebegone face as it had been when he had said the words. He’s ridiculous in so many ways. He is three or more inches shorter than I am so that he has to tilt his head to look into my face. His speech is exotic and often lazy and larded with words I don’t understand. He is an alien to me, a man from a world I know so little about. How can I find him, as I do, so exciting? How can I behave, because of him, like a kitchen maid told she can’t have followers, sneaking out of my own home in the dark nights, going to places which are seedy to say the least, dangerous at the worst? How can I do it?’

  She opened her eyes and stared again at the polished mahogany furniture and the red turkey carpet and gleaming satin polished brass amongst which she had lived all her life and saw it for the sterile prison it was. ‘I can do it,’ she whispered aloud, ‘because everything else I do is so dreadful. That is why.’

  And it was a bad reason for feeling as she did about the man waiting in the park. She had to admit it now; she could no longer deny the fact that had been battering at her mind all through this past month of misery. She was obsessed by him. The thought of his face made her belly lurch. The touch of his hand made her chest tighten so that she could hardly breathe. Her dreams were laced with sensual experiences with him that amazed her when she recalled them in her waking hours. Altogether he had moved into the fabric of her in a way that had changed her completely. She would never be the same again, whatever she did now. And feeling like that is no basis for any reasonable discussion.

  But all the same what I am going to do now, she told herself, is go to the park and talk to him. That is all. I shall go to the park and talk to him – what harm can there be in that?

  And she went softly down the stairs, leaving her parents snoring in their lonely rooms behind her, to slip out of the house into the darkness.

  13

  It was not, after all, as warm as she had thought. Without her jacket she shivered a little and that made her walk faster, clattering along Leinster Terrace from street lamp to street lamp and not caring if anyone heard her. It was now late, anyway; she had heard the clock chiming half past eleven as she had slipped out of the house, and that meant that most law abiding citizens would be in bed – and who could be more law abiding than their neighbours in this respectable stuccoed street?

  She hovered on the kerb of the Bayswater Road, looking first westwards towards Notting Hill and then eastwards to Marble Arch and Oxford Street and all was still. Not even a late cab was trotting up the wide expanse and she took a deep breath and plunged across the road to the other side where the trees from the Park hung over the railings to make a shadowed damp place well away from the light.

  After a moment she turned eastwards to make for the Lancaster Gate. He hadn’t said where in the Park he would wait for her but that surely would be the nearest, and it should be open still.

  It was, and she stepped inside feeling the roughness of the gravel beneath her light shoes as she left the paving stones behind, and stood for a moment in the darkness.

  It was very still. Behind her an occasional horse clopped by, making its way homewards to a warm stable, and there were one or two hurrying foot passengers, but their scarceness only served to underline just how quiet and empty it was here in the black-leaved fastness of the Park and she stood there poised, almost ready to turn and run away, back to the warmth and security of Leinster Terrace.

  And to its misery, she thought and stepped forwards with a confidence she didn’t really feel, peering into the darkness. ‘Kid?’ she called softly, and then again, more loudly, ‘Kid?’

  There was no answer and she stood still a while longer, her head up, trying to listen. Her eyes were getting more accustomed to the darkness now and she could see ahead of her the blackness thinning where the path from Marlborough Gate crossed the Lancaster Gate path on its way to the Broad Walk, and beyond that the massing of the trees on the far side of the open spaces that flanked the paths. She could smell more clearly too, now, the delicate scent of daffodils and new leaves and crushed grass and that heartened her, and she stepped even further into the Park and called more loudly, ‘Kid? Where are you?’

  Still there was no reply and she felt a stirring of alarm that had deepened the pool of fear and doubt that had been lying low inside her ever since she had first stepped out of the house this evening, expecting to take herself to the East End, and she was suddenly ashamed of herself. At her age, to be afraid! Of what? There was nothing to fear but her own fear, she told herself stoutly and started to walk along the Marlborough Gate path towards the Broad Walk. He must have come into the Park further up, she told herself, at Porchester Terrace Gate. She would have to meet him, somehow. And she walked sharply, feeling the chill of the night air creeping into her through the fabric of her gown.

  Now and again she stopped and listened for footsteps and called again, but still there was no reply and she thought – I’ll go as far as Porchester Terrace and then give up. He must have changed his mind – and desolation filled her and she began to hurry, trying to escape her own doubts.

  It happened so suddenly that it seemed the world had turned itself upside down and then lurched back, leaving her breathless and yet wanting to scream. At one moment she was half running and the next she was held hard by strong arms that would not let her move, so that her feet scrabbled helplessly in the gravel, and as she opened her mouth wider in an attempt to force out a sound, any sort of sound, she remembered for the first time the tales the kitchen maids sometimes told of footpads and thieves in the Park. And her head began to spin so that she felt sick.

  ‘Millie, where
was you, for Gawd’s sake?’ His voice was loud in her ear and she thought at first she had imagined it, so terrified was she but his breath was warm on her face and she could smell him too, that mixture of bay rum and tobacco and whatever else it was that was so uniquely him and she felt her fear begin to subside. But what took its place was almost worse, for she felt tears rise in her and burst from her throat so that she was weeping bitterly, feeling her cheeks wet and her nose blocked and her eyes hot, and then he had both arms about her, and was pushing her face down against the rough shoulder of his jacket.

  ‘Millie, boobalah, what is it? Millie, don’t take on so, oh, my dear, dear Millie, don’t – please, don’t cry so – I can’t bear it –’

  He moved then, taking one arm from behind her so that he could touch her face and he fumbled for her chin and with hard fingers pulled on it and she opened her eyes and looked at him, so close to her and tried to speak and could only gulp.

  ‘Ah, boobalah!’ he said with great tenderness. ‘Such a frightened little girl!’ and lifted his chin and kissed her. His mouth felt hot and dry against hers and she tried to speak, to tell him he mustn’t, so that her lips opened. And that seemed to galvanize him, for he was no longer tender, but was suddenly very urgent indeed, thrusting his tongue against her own in a way that was so desperate she was amazed.

  ‘I can’t –’ She managed to pull away from him and turned her head away. ‘I can’t breathe –’ she said and he laughed and reached into his pocket and she felt soft linen against her nose.

  ‘Blow!’ he commanded, and after one startled glance at his face just visible in the darkness, she did so, needing to rid herself of the tears that had so nearly choked her.

  ‘Did I frighten you?’ he almost crooned it. ‘I didn’t mean to, boobalah, believe me I didn’t, I wouldn’t frighten you for the world –’ And again his arms were round her and he was kissing her, but this time she could breathe through her cleared nose and had no excuse for pulling away.