On the street, Eardley turns to Hasan. “I was hoping it would go well,” he says nervously. “I’m sorry. Perhaps he will change his mind.”
“He won’t. He’s a Qasim—and all Qasims are stubborn.”
“But maybe—”
“I will need you to do one more thing for me.”
“Of course. And then?”
“And then I suggest you seek employment elsewhere. You remind me of a most unpleasant evening.”
Through the window, Ollie watches his father turn his back on Eardley and arrogantly strut away. Eardley seems to deflate as he walks, disappearing into his greatcoat.
“Ollie, are you all right?” Charles asks.
“No, not really.” Ollie tells the truth. He is scared, angry, frustrated—and very, very sad. He is at war with his own father, who holds his mother hostage. An unfair advantage. He continues to look out the window, pretending to watch Eardley melt into nothingness, but in reality Ollie is choking back tears.
His reflection in the glass gives him away.
Chapter 22
Ollie is drunk. The George and Vulture is a block behind him, perhaps two. Maybe three. He chokes back a burning finger of bile squeezed up from his stomach, stumbles over the jutting lip of a cobblestone, steadies himself against the sooty brick of a building—or is it a wall? He had set off for the river to clear his head—a simple excursion—but his rudderless brain has steered him into a murky backwater of dark, stinking alleys that twist like the entrails of a great beast. As he coughs and dizzyingly turns around, searching for some marker, some indication of where he is, an awful panic seizes him. He cannot remember which way is forward. Another alley converges on this point. That way? The stench of garbage and human waste surrounds him like a fog and he chokes, falls to his knees, heaves up a sour stew of old wine and chewed sausage, wipes a string of vomit from his mouth, and finally sits down in the filth, leaning against the cold brick wall where he passes out.
He dreams of his mother. She is on the deck of a ship, waving. At him—no, at a gathering of Evangelicals on the shore, admirers who wave back and blow their loving kisses in her direction. Ollie stands alone on a bridge, watching the ship, watching the crowd, watching his mother steam away. His mother—she is not alone. She stands with her arm around Jalal, who is still twelve years old. Standing behind them in her beautiful green gown is Mum. They are leaving, all of them. Abandoning him. So happy they seem! So eager to get on with their new lives in their new destination. Ollie waves frantically, trying to get their attention, but they don’t notice. Or don’t care. At last he can no longer see them—only the silhouette of the ship. He sinks to the floor of the bridge, sitting there for a moment silently, sadly, then lying down, his back pressing against the cold iron platform.
Oh yes, he is lost.
A seagull lands on him and starts to peck at his chest. It hurts! His hands flail, trying to slap the gull away.
Not a gull! A snake.
No, a stick poking him in the ribs. Get it away!
He grabs the stick, opens his eyes. The world is dark and blurry, his head swirling. The ship’s bridge is gone. He is in a dark alley, holding a stick that wiggles and prods. A shadowy face looms over him. The filthy face of a boy.
“He’s alive, I told ya.”
The voice is young, a child’s. There are more faces staring at him, half-moons in the dim light. And more children’s laughter.
“Hey mister, whatcha doin’ ‘ere?
“Drunk, ‘e is. Get ‘is money.”
The jostling stick grows dead in Ollie’s hand. A mouse is in his pocket, wiggling. He grabs it. A hand. A tiny hand!
“Ouch!”
They are stealing his money! Slowly, Ollie’s brain begins to engage. He grasps the hand firmly, but it fights to get away. Suddenly he is beaten by more sticks, a full-body bastinado. He lets the hand go and the faces retreat.
The thrashing stops. The boys are seven, maybe eight years old. A half-dozen of them. They point their sticks at him threateningly.
“I says, forge’ ‘im, ‘e’s not drunk enough.”
“Will yer ‘ave a look at ‘im, eh? Them not so bad kit, ‘e’s got notes on ‘im, I tell yer.”
Ollie must be drunker than he thought. These filthy urchins are ragged and small. But aggressive. Maybe this is still a dream.
“Poke ‘im in the bloomin’ eye wiv a stick, see wot ‘e does.”
Ollie doesn’t like the sound of this. With great effort, he pushes his back up the scummy brick wall and points a menacing finger at the Lilliputian mob. The boys take a step backward, jabbing at him with their sticks.
“I don’ like th’ looks of dis,” one of them says.
“There’re six of us and one of ‘im, right? I says ‘e’s too drunk ter hurt us.”
“Go fer ‘is shins!”
The boys raise their sticks like lances and prepare to charge. Suddenly terrified, Ollie holds up his hands and shouts, “Nooo! What do you want, money?”
The boys look at each other. One of them, the tallest boy with a strikingly handsome face, speaks in a high-pitched voice. “Wot do ya fin’? We’re not aht ‘ere for the chuffin’ fan of it.” The gruff words spoken in such a soft, childish voice, are almost comical.
Ollie’s head is clearing. Maybe he had slept for a while, shaking off his drunken stupor, before the boys discovered him. He licks his dry lips, looks around the shadowy maze of alleys and decides on a reasonable course of action.
“Maybe we can strike a bargain,” he says.
“A deal, is ‘at wot ya mean?”
“That’s right. If we don’t fight, no one gets hurt. I have money. I’ll give you money if you do something for me.”
The boys consult—argue is a better word. Finally the tall boy addresses Ollie. “Ya sum kind of pervert or summit?”
Pervert? The boys have the wrong idea. “No, no, not that,” he says. The boys seem puzzled.
“We could take yer bread ‘n ‘honey if we bleedin’ wanted to.”
“Yes, I’m sure you could. But some of you would be badly hurt. No sense in that.” Ollie is astonished that this gang of youngsters is roaming the alleys so late. He reaches into a pocket and takes out a handful of schillings, keeping his notes and guineas carefully tucked away.
The boys’ eyes grow big as they stare at the money.
“I’ll tell you what,” Ollie says. “I will pay you to answer questions. One schilling per answer. Does that seem fair?”
The boys consult again, their heads nodding up and down.
“Awright. But yer ‘ave ter pay us after each answer.”
“Then put down your sticks. My first question is, where are your parents?”
The tall boy objects. “That’s six questions!”
“All right,” Ollie agrees. “Then it’s worth six schillings. Who wants to go first?”
The tall boy begins, and then each in turn tells his tale. Slowly, the boys begin to relax. Over the next hour they answer Ollie’s questions, taking seats on the garbage-strewn alley floor, gradually moving closer to Ollie, all the better to take the schillings. Ollie, too, sits down, drawn into their stories of neglect and abuse. Two of the boys had escaped from grim London orphanages in which they were poorly fed, worked to the bone, and sexually abused by the adults in power. One of them had been abandoned at the orphanage door by his mother when he was four years old. One of the others lives with an alcoholic father who beats him when he is sober, and beats him harder when drunk. The two youngest boys live in brothels with their prostitute moms, who work nights. Until a month ago, the tall, handsome boy had lived in a nanny-house, an abode of working child prostitutes. Four of them already had worked in organized child gangs—pickpocketing, thieving, selling the sexual favors of girls barely older than themselves—and had escaped the iron-fisted tyranny of their “boss” despite his menacing threats. If they should ever be caught by him…
As the boys talk, the alley fills up with their
pain and grief and hopelessness. None of them believes he will live to see the age of ten. Something—starvation, murder, illness, accident—is sure to get them. But not to pity, for death will relieve their misery. If only the act of dying were not so terrifying! All of them have only contempt for adults, the tormenters of children and defilers of innocence. In just a few years, these little boys have experienced brutality and exploitation beyond measure.
And yet they have survived!
“Look after yorself, right, that’s the bleedin’ rule out ‘ere,” the tall boy says. “No bloke will do it for yer. It’s up ter yer alone. Even yor own mum won’t ‘ave a look after yer in the end, that’s ‘ow it is.” The words produce a long silence.
And that’s when Ollie realizes he is no longer lost. His despair over the dilemma presented by his father—should he go back to Persia to save his mother from embarrassment?—is ended. There is no dilemma. Adults can take care of themselves. But who will look after the children? He will never return to Persia. As for his mother—she has already steamed out of London on her own vessel, leaving him behind. A curse on parents! Let her deal with Mirza Hasan Qasim and his secret. Ollie will look after his own interests.
Ollie admires the grit and raw honesty of these boys. Without their pure selfishness they would perish in days, perhaps hours. This is what saves them. It is their secret to survival. Selfishness. Looking after themselves, in the direst circumstances, when no one else will.
The pause in the conversation has become awkward. One of the boys looks at his ragged companions and finally breaks the silence: “Wot now then, eh? We all gonna sit ‘round an’ sing hymns?”
The tall boy seems to break out of a coma. He looks up at Ollie. “Say, we’ve been answerin’ yor questions for a wile now, but yer ‘aven’t been payin’. I fink yer owe us some schillin’s.” The tall boy is right. As the boys had become drawn deeply into their own terrible stories, they had slowly forgotten about the reward. Until now.
“All right, I have an idea,” Ollie says. “Agreed, I owe you money, but none of us knows how much. Not for sure. So I have a proposal.” He fishes a gleaming guinea out of his pocket and shows it. The boys lean forward expectantly. “This is the last of my money.” Not quite true, but he has won their confidence. “I will give it to you on three conditions. First, you must agree to share it equally. Second, you must agree that this covers my debt to you. And third—please show me the way back to Lombard Street.”
“Yer ‘ave yorself a deal,” the tall boy says. “By the way, my bleedin’ name is Tim.” He extends a small hand. “Tim Shaw.”
Ollie takes Tim’s hand, pressing the coin between their palms. “And I am Oliver Chadwick. Remember—share the guinea.”
“Aye, it belongs ter all of us.”
Ollie silently follows the boys through the maze of alleys, jumping over piles of rat-infested refuse, tripping over squealing cats. He had drunkenly wandered much further than he had thought into the bowels of London. Suddenly the boys stop. The tall boy gestures Ollie forward, out of London’s entrails, back into the relatively civilized world of Lombard Street.
It is early morning. The sky is just a pale glow. Human life is emerging—the bill poster and his glue-pot, the scrubber, two or three cabs trolling for drunkards too soused to walk home, a scattering of shopkeepers rattling keys in their doors and dreaming of a new day better then the last one. Ollie steps into the street and takes a deep breath. Compared to the rancidness of the back alleys, even the soot-filled air of Lombard Street smells particularly sweet this morning. Ah, the fragrance of hot pies!
Ollie looks down at himself. What a mess! His clothes are stained with muck, his hands are black and sticky, and the foul taste in his mouth…!
Yet he feels oddly settled. He smiles. And then he turns to thank the boys.
But no one is there.
Chapter 23
The much-anticipated event is upon them—the first Almack’s ball of the Season. For weeks, Anne has dragged Herbert and Oliver to dance lessons tutored by none other than Camille Dundas, who has finely tuned the steps of such important personages as Lord and Lady Grimston and Princess Wittycapstein. These exhausting preparations have given Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Eaton and their son a dance repertoire hand-picked for Almack’s Assembly Rooms—waltzes, gallopades, and quadrilles. Anne is now quite certain that Herbert will not embarrass her on the dance floor.
Oliver accepts the tedious dance lessons as part of the necessary education of an English gentleman. Now sixteen, he has the height and bearing of a young man, with astonishingly good looks—the gift of his mother’s genes—and moist, dusky eyes that mesmerize every young lady who passes him on the street, though he doesn’t notice. He thinks through the complicated steps and gestures of the quadrille as he finishes dressing in the knee-breeches, white cravat, and chapeau bras dictated for male guests by the Patronesses.
The whirlwind of preparations during these past weeks has helped Ollie forget about the heated row with his father at the George & Vulture. But in the back of Ollie’s mind is the nagging fear that his father will carry out his terrible threat. And if he does, Ollie will be to blame, for Ollie had decided to make no warning and launch no defense.
The time for departure arrives. Anne is exhausted from her day-long apprehension of her first ball. Herbert is irritated by his wife’s incessant fussing. They march out of the Belgravia mansion toward the carriage where Ollie is already seated, sampling the cool night air. Anne has timed their departure so that they will arrive at Almack’s shortly after ten. Earlier would make them seem over-eager; later would unnecessarily shorten the evening, and Anne wants the evening to last forever.
Ollie peers out of the carriage window and sees the dazzling figure of his mother glistening and sparkling in the moonlight. She is wearing Mum’s brilliant diadem with bandeaux of the same costly jewels in her hair. A flowing tunic of white tulle, embroidered in silver, caresses a gown of rich white satin that molds itself to every curve and movement. Like an angel, she glides to the carriage, and like an angel, she remains an enigma to Ollie. He pictures her in Bushruyih, in the anderun, the favorite of the other wives, so selfless and kind, so tender and caring. But now, despite her shimmering beauty, her heart seems to have hardened. She is no longer his mother; she had given up that role to Mum upon arrival in London, washing her hands of him just as easily as she had washed off the Persian.
“Ollie,” Anne says as she is helped into the carriage, “you look like a proper gentleman. Isn’t this fun?”
Neither Ollie nor Herbert replies. Anne adjusts her gown as she sits on the cushioned seat. The horses jerk the carriage into motion. All the way to Almack’s, the three are silent. Anne stares ahead, occasionally glancing out the open side windows but ever-so-careful not to let the wind muss her hair. She seems in another world, oblivious of her companions, rehearsing in her mind the coming events. She wants everything to go perfectly! Tonight is the pinnacle of her transformation from slave-girl to London ton. She will be a celebrity in the highest circles—not a visitor, but one of them, a peer. She is tense, but has never felt more alive. Her skin tingles and her stomach churns.
And then they enter the hallowed kingdom of Almack’s, which extends out its guarded doors to King St. at St. James, where London’s most fashionable thoroughfare links up with its most aristocratic square. Herbert steps from the carriage and gives his gloved hand to Anne as she gracefully disembarks. She pauses for a moment, studies the details of her husband and then adjusts his cravat into a perfect waterfall, patting him on the chest afterward like a patient puppy. “Oooh,” she says, a kind of sigh, an admittance that the time has come to ascend the staircase.
Oliver follows behind, forgotten it seems. Orbiting around him are society’s matrons and debutantes, giggling and chattering nervously, tripping embarrassingly on their long gowns, complaining viciously about their rivals, huffing and panting with the exertion of the climb.
Inside, the ma
in ballroom is bejeweled with glowing oil-lamps and wax-lights that spread a soft, glimmering sheen over the entire assembly. The perimeter of the room is fringed with two rows of plump sofas that are quickly filling with guests staking out favored positions. At the far end of the room, on massive burgundy sofas embroidered with gold and silver threads, the imperious Patronesses hold court, and it is toward these imposing thrones that Anne and Herbert lead Oliver. Gracefully and politely they prance around the edges of the room, careful not to cross the unpopulated center marked off for dancing by red velvet ropes lest they violate an unspoken rule. Before the first dance, to cross this inviolate space is to call undue attention to oneself, and despite the peacock strutting and flirtatious preening of the guests, such a gaffe is considered pathetically untoward.
Oliver is dazzled by the human ornamentation that surrounds him—girls in gowns with fashionably low-cut bodices and haughty bustles made of silk and satin and velvet of every hue (some pale and delicate but others deep-hued and sensuous), their hair intricately interwoven with birds nests or fruit baskets or whole gardens of flowers, or wearing hats of crepe crested with waving plumes of feathers; and the matrons with rouged faces, false frontlets, and ceintures of costly brilliants, all of them ruthlessly plotting to keep their girls in the way of the “prizes” but out of the way of the “detrimentals.” The men, too—particularly those seeking an ornamental companion from the highest circles—strut and fluff their feathers, posing to flaunt their cat-skin waistcoats and mirror-finish Hessian boots and diamond-studded watch fobs. And into this sumptuous stew is stirred foreign dignitaries in full military dress or formal native costume—an ambassador from Pakistan, a German general and Spanish admiral, diplomats from America, Russia, and India. Oliver is surrounded by the titled—Ladies and Marchionesses, Princesses and Countesses; Barons and Lords and Viscounts and Earls and Marquisses and…
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