"I suppose you did," Maud admitted.
"And you, Indy? Are you still living off that Bank of England account?"
"What? Oh, yes. Yes, I am."
"Well, it's time you got rid of that. The return is far too low. It's too safe, that account. It's for vicars and little old ladies and...I say, old hound, is something wrong?"
"How very observant you are, Wish," Maud said archly.
"What is it, Indy?" he asked.
"Nothing, really. I'm fine."
Wish gave her a look.
"India just met the Honorable Member's member. And didn't particu-larly like him."
"Maud!" India screeched, mortified.
Maud flapped a hand at her, then told Wish what had happened.
He nodded sagely, then said, "Not to worry. I know exactly what the problem is."
"Oh, do you?" Maud asked.
"Yes. Absolutely. Let me ask you something, Indy--do you love Freddie?"
"Of course I love Freddie."
He clapped his hands together. "Well, stop it. Love buggers everything. Love be damned, I say. You should never be in love with your spouse. You should only be in love with your lover. And he should be someone entirely unsuitable. An actor, perhaps. Or a painter. That sort."
"That's some fabulous advice," Maud said.
"It's excellent advice!" he protested. "One should only marry for heirs and spares, houses and horses. Why else would one do it? It's like volunteering to go to prison. I'll never do it. Prefer to make my money honestly."
"Go wash, Wish," Maud said. "They'll be calling us for supper soon."
Wish looked from Maud to India. "Wasn't I helpful?"
"Not in the least," India said.
"Hmmm. Guess I'm better at money than love." He stood to leave. "See you at dinner, my darlings."
He left, and Maud turned back to her sister. She still looked unhappy.
"India?"
"Hmm?"
"You didn't answer my question earlier. About your feelings. What I meant was--"
"I know what you meant," India said peevishly.
"So you do love Freddie?"
"I just told Wish I did. Didn't you hear me?"
"I heard you perfectly well. I just didn't believe you."
"All right then, no," she said angrily. "I don't love Freddie. And that is exactly why I intend to marry him. I had those feelings once. A long time ago. I never want them again."
"Hugh?" Maud asked.
India said nothing.
"You don't have to marry Freddie."
"I want to marry Freddie. We belong together. He's perfect."
"You mean he's safe."
India was silent for a few seconds, then she said, "Hugh Mullins was a fantasy, Maud. We both know that. A fantasy cooked up by a silly young girl."
"I don't remember you dismissing Hugh as a fantasy at the time. I remember you being heartbroken."
India shook her head. "It was all romance novel nonsense. Marriages-- the good ones--are built on mutual interests, similar backgrounds, affection, respect, regard, not necessarily love."
"Where'd you get that insight? From one of your textbooks?"
"Go ahead, Maud, make remarks. What about Duff? That was all about love and attraction and...and sex. We all tried to talk you out of that, but you had to have him."
When she was nineteen, Maud married Duff Haddon, a duke's son. He was rakishly handsome, smart, funny, exciting to be around. Unfortunately--as she found out shortly after they were married--he was also a drunk. He was killed while they were holidaying in Cairo. He'd had too much wine at a restaurant and insulted the proprietor. His body was found the next morning in a filthy alley. He'd been stabbed to death. Maud was not quite twenty-one when she was widowed. Desperate to put the pain of losing Duff behind her, she'd taken back her maiden name and tried to forget him.
"Yes, Indy, I made a disastrous marriage," Maud said. "We all know that. And it's very useful to your argument to hold it up as an example and say that you don't want to make the same mistake, but it is also dishonest. The truth is that you are going to marry a man you don't love because losing the man you did love nearly destroyed you, and you won't open yourself up to that kind of pain again."
India glared at her, about to make a retort, then suddenly she surrendered instead. In typical India fashion, Maud noted. Not by admitting de-feat, but by changing the subject.
"Let me have that," she said, motioning for her cigarette.
"Oh, you don't want this," Maud said hastily. "It's ...um...unhealthy."
"I do. Just a puff," India said.
"Really, India, I don't think..."
India got off the bed, walked over to Maud, and snatched the cigarette. She took a couple of quick drags, then coughed violently.
"Good God, what's in this? Gunpowder?" she asked, handing it back.
Close, Maud thought.
India coughed again, said she felt lightheaded, and lay back down on the bed.
Wonderful, Maud thought. All we need tonight is India higher than a kite at dinner with her future in-laws. Good God, what'll I do? I'll ring for tea. No, coffee, extra strong. She did so.
"Coffee. What a good idea," India said. "I feel ever so sleepy suddenly. Must be the country air." She closed her eyes, and after a minute or so qui-etly said, "He was beautiful, wasn't he, Maud? He was so very beautiful. I still dream about him."
Maud barely recognized this soft, languid voice. It was such a change from India's usual brisk tones. She knew it was the opium talking.
"He was indeed," Maud said. "What is it the poets say? 'Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all."
"Tennyson. What a prat," India said. "I bet he never loved anyone. He wouldn't spout such tripe if he had."
Maud remembered that awful day--the day Bea died and Hugh was arrested. The house had been in an uproar. They had disappeared, Hugh and Bea. Neither had come to work for two days and no one could find them. India was beside herself with worry. Maud, too. They knew Bea was pregnant.
It was India who'd finally found them, huddled in the ruins of an old cottage on their father's estate. Bea had had an abortion. Hugh'd paid for it, but he wouldn't say how.
Something had gone wrong. The bleeding wouldn't stop. Bea had a fever, she was terribly ill, but she wouldn't let Hugh take her home or to the village doctor. She was afraid of anyone finding out what she'd done.
India had fetched them and they'd all gone to the cottage together-- herself, India, Freddie, Bing, and Wish--to try to work out what to do. Bea was wrapped in old horse blankets. Maud could see the blood seeping through them. Bingham was standing in a corner of the ruined cottage, pale and silent. Freddie was pacing. Wish was holding Bea's hand, telling her stupid jokes, trying to jolly her out of it.
"We have to get her to the hospital," India said. "We have to take her now."
"India, slow down. Let me think for a minute," Freddie had said.
"We don't have a minute!"
Freddie had taken her by the elbow then and marched her away from Bea and Hugh, so they couldn't hear him. But Maud had.
"What she's done is against the law," he whispered. "If we're not careful, we'll all catch it."
"For God's sake, Freddie, she's ill! She needs help. Don't you see that? Don't you care for her at all?"
"I do care for her!" he'd hissed. "Of course I do, but I care for you more. What if you're arrested? Just wait, can't you? Wait until I can think of a proper solution. Until I can sort this out."
"I can't wait. She can't wait," India said flatly.
Then she'd told Hugh to carry Bea down to Blackwood's gates and stay behind the trees there. The gates weren't far from the cottage. She would come for them. In one of the traps. She would take them to Cardiff. To the hospital there. Where they weren't known. She'd stalked off alone, leaving the rest of them to worry and whisper. When she'd shown up by the gates, a furious Freddie got into the trap with her. He made Maud stay w
ith Bing-ham, who looked like he might faint any second, and had Wish go up to the house to explain to Lord Burnleigh what had happened, and to assure him that he, Freddie, would safeguard India.
It was because of Freddie, Maud thought now, that the family had avoided an enormous scandal. He had intimidated the hospital staff, and two members of the press, telling them that the Earl of Burnleigh would have their jobs if any of them dared to mention his daughter's name in con-nection with Hugh and Bea Mullins. When they arrived home, the earl had raged at India and told her to get out of his sight. After she'd gone to her room, he thanked Freddie and commended him on his quick thinking, then he'd sacked Hugh's grieving father and mother and threw them out of their cottage.
Everything changed after that. They were none of them ever the same people again. The memories of what had happened at the cottage--of what each had done, or failed to do--haunted them. Maud knew that Hugh's death was the reason behind Wish's inability to settle and Bingham's withdrawal from the world. She blamed Freddie's drivenness on it, and her own constant need to divert herself with unsuitable men and equally unsuitable substances. Losing Hugh and his family had traumatized them all, but it had damaged India the most. It was why she'd become a doctor. Why she'd turned her back on their parents. And why she now wished to marry a man she did not love.
Maud looked at her sister now. She was breathing softly. Her eyes were closed. She saw her, for a moment, as she was when she was seventeen--shy and smart, always blinking behind her spectacles. Flinching at their mother's voice. Awkward inside the house. Brave outside of it. Riding horses no one else dared even mount. Getting cats out of tall trees. Taking Christmas boxes to the poor. Going right up to their cottage doors and handing them to the thin mothers and their dirty, wide-eyed children.
Most of all, she remembered India's face aglow in the darkness of their bedroom as she told her what Hugh's lips and hands felt like, and how much she loved him. Her voice had been so full of feeling, so full of passion when she talked about him. And his death had broken her heart. She'd been inconsolable. Eventually, she had picked up the jagged pieces, put them into a box, and put the box on a high shelf, never to be opened again. All the passion in her life went into her studies after Hugh. Not to a man. And certainly not to Freddie.
It was no way to enter into a marriage, Maud thought.
Or was it?
Maybe it was better to put your heart up on a nice high shelf, rather than risk its getting broken. Perhaps India has the right idea after all, she thought. Maybe it's best to marry a good, sensible partner and have companionship and affection, rather than love.
Maybe.
India had fallen asleep. Maud placed a woollen throw over her. She touched the back of her hand to her sister's cheek, smoothed her furrowed brow. She thought of the years India had spent studying the human body, how hard she had worked to unlock its mysteries. She knew the names of muscles and bones. Knew how organs worked. Knew everything there was to know, except the most important thing.
"Poor little Indy," she whispered. "You know so much, so bloody much, but you don't even know your own heart."
Chapter 20
"Mel, what'll I do?" Fiona asked the foreman at Oliver's Wharf. Her heart was racing. She was trembling with excitement. "We were going to have
lunch. A quiet lunch on the Old Stairs. Just the two of us. Can you imagine? I couldn't get near the Old Stairs now if I tried."
A roar went up, rolling over her like thunder. She laughed, then shook her head in disbelief.
"I've never seen anything like it," Mel Trumbull said. "Not in all me born days. You shouldn't venture down there, Mrs. B. Too many blokes shouting and carrying on. Stay up here out of harm's way."
Fiona and Mel were standing at an open loophole in Oliver's tea wharf. Below them, in Wapping High Street, about a thousand men stood shoul-der to shoulder, shouting, whistling, and clapping. Some stood in the backs of delivery wagons or hung off lampposts. Scores more crowded the door-ways of neighboring wharves. All of them were craning their necks to get a better view of a blond man who was pacing back and forth on top of a lum-ber wagon, thundering at them with passion and conviction.
"How did he get up there?" Fiona asked.
"Word got out that he was in the pub with Tillet and Burns. Some blokes collared him on his way out and hoisted him up on their shoulders. They stuck him on top of the wagon and asked for a speech," Mel replied.
"Looks like they're getting one," Fiona said.
Her heart swelled with pride as she watched the man. A smile as broad as the Thames broke over her face. She knew him. So well. And yet watching him now, watching him command the attention of thousands, she felt she was seeing him anew.
It was Joe. Her Joe.
He'd gone to the Town of Ramsgate, a riverside pub next to Oliver's, for an exploratory meeting with Ben Tillet and John Burns--two influential labor leaders and architects of the 1889 dockers' strike. He'd meant only to feel them out, to seek their advice, possibly their support, for his bid for the Tower Hamlets seat. He'd known that Fiona planned to be at Oliver's that morning inspecting a tea shipment, and had asked her to join him for fish and chips on the Old Stairs, to tell her what, if anything, had resulted from the meeting. Their meal would have to wait, however, for the voters clearly would not. Fiona gripped the edge of the loophole as another roar went up from the crowd.
"Does he do this often?" Mel asked.
"He's never done it in his life," she replied.
"Blimey, Mrs. B. Has he been taking elocution lessons?"
Fiona laughed. "Yes, in fact he has. For the last thirty years!"
Some would have been overwhelmed by the demand for an impromptu speech in front of such a huge, boisterous crowd. Not Joe. He might be head of a retail empire now and more used to plush boardrooms than street corners, but he'd been born and bred a costermonger--and costers were never short of words. He'd grown up in the streets of Whitechapel, spending more of his life on the cobbles than in his house. His first words were "Buy my fine parsley-o!" yelled from his cradle--an old vegetable basket-- tucked behind his parents' barrow.
He knew East London, knew the people who lived there, and he knew how to speak to them. He had a way of making his speech into a dialogue. He joked with his spectators one minute, challenged them the next. As a lad, Joe had used costers' tricks to catch people's eyes. Now he was using his words to capture their hearts and minds.
She saw that he'd flung off his suit jacket. His sleeves were rolled up; his tie was gone. She knew he'd done it only because he hated suits and al-ways said he couldn't think straight in a jacket and tie, but the gesture had the effect of uniting him with his audience. In his shirtsleeves and open collar, he was no longer a guv'nor, he was one of them.
A thickset man made a bullhorn of his hands. "The Stronghold's robbed of guns and the guv what owned them takes his business to Southwark," he shouted at Joe. "The Morocco burns and it's fifteen more blokes out of work. We need more coppers. Will you get them for us?"
Joe shook his head. "No," he said. "No, I won't."
There were sounds of astonishment, boos, and guffaws. Joe waited them out, then said, "Why would I waste ratepayers' money like that? There are enough constables here already. Enough station houses."
The booing died down; the crowd quieted.
"Lytton promises you more constables," Joe said, "because it makes for good headlines. Sometimes he even gives them to you, but it doesn't matter. He could send in a thousand more constables and it wouldn't matter. You want to get rid of crime? Get rid of its causes--poverty, igno-rance, hunger, disease. No, I won't get you more police officers or jails, I'll get you more schools and more hospitals. I'll get you better wages for your work and compensation for your injuries. You want more rozzers, vote for Freddie Lytton. You want a living wage, a better life, a future... vote for me."
A cheer went up. There were whistles and applause.
Fiona watched Joe, amazed. "It's a
s if he were born to this," she said to Mel.
Mel nodded. "I think he was, Mrs. B. He's a coster like you said. Selling's in their blood, and what's politics if it ain't selling? Only difference is, it ain't apples he's selling now, it's himself."
"And it looks like the crowd is buying," she said.
Fiona had been shocked the morning Joe told her he wanted to run for the Tower Hamlets seat, but she'd soon recovered herself and said it was a wonderful idea, that he must do it, and that she would support him every step of the way. She knew he would need her support, and the support of many others besides, for he had a tremendous battle ahead of him.
Winter Rose, The Page 23
