by JL Merrow
London Lark
By JL Merrow
Published by JMS Books LLC
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Copyright 2019 JL Merrow
ISBN 9781646560257
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Published in the United States of America.
* * * *
London Lark
By JL Merrow
The first time I met Miss Pandora Piper, her what was to become the shining star of the Criterion and the darling of London society, she was in a right state, lying in the gutter with both legs broken and her head hanging off to one side.
“It’s proper criminal,” I told my gaffer, old Arthur the tinkerer, as folks call him, although it’s Mr Tunstall to the likes of you and me, “what the toffs’ll do to their playthings.”
Top notch goods, she was, fine featured and with soft ivory skin, so lifelike you’d almost have mistaken her for human, if it hadn’t been for the metal poking out of her poor torn limbs. Lying there abandoned in the gutter, like any other beggar what’s fallen on hard times. “It ain’t right,” I muttered.
“Now then, Hodgkins,” old Arthur said in that soothing old gin-and-baccy voice of his. He stroked his chin with a rasping sound as his calluses caught on the stubble. “We’ll see her straight, don’t you fret. Grab her shoulders—I’ll take the other end, wouldn’t want a young lad like you seeing something he shouldn’t, heh heh heh—and we’ll heave her up on the cart. And no letting that head fall, neither. She don’t need no more dents in her poor face, Lord love her.”
Now, I ain’t a lad, I’m older than I look, and I didn’t reckon Miss Pandora (as we later called her) had anything up her skirts I hadn’t seen every day of my life and twice on Sundays, that being bath night, but neither did I fancy a clip round the ear and a lost place, so I kept mum and did as I was told.
So we heaved her up on the cart, more careful like than it sounds, and old Arthur flipped a sixpence to the lad who’d run and told us where to find “a proper living doll, posh like, with all her bits and stuff.” The lad ran off sharpish, most likely to pick up his mates and head to the nearest gin palace, but as my gaffer always says, it keeps them off the streets. Then I set myself between the handles of that cart and trundled her back to the workshop in St Elegius Mews, with old Arthur walking along beside to make sure none of her ended up back in the gutter as we rattled over the cobbles.
She was a proper prize, she was. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on her. Well, them and my screwdrivers. Me and my gaffer, we fix up all sorts in the shop, but it ain’t often we get to work on quality like this. We laid her down on the worktop, her golden hair falling free from its pins and spilling out over the scarred wood like sunshine, and I turned up the gas so’s I could see what I was about.
“Costs money, gas does,” old Arthur griped, and then he clapped me on the shoulder and left to keep a prior appointment with a tuppenny’s worth of gin. He never was one to keep a dog and bark himself, ‘specially since the tremors in his hands got so bad.
“Chucked out of some toff’s carriage in the night, were you?” I murmured as I unscrewed her head from her poor neck. “Too embarrassed to take you in for repair after what he done, I’ll bet. So he ought to be, being so rough with a fine lady like you.”
I lifted her head clean off her neck, and her eyelids fluttered, then fell shut. Gave me a warm feeling, you know? Like she was trusting me to see her right while she slept.
I cut away what was left of her clothes—fine silk all torn to rags, as if there weren’t no one starving in the world—and set to work on them poor broken legs of hers first. The skin was ripped up something shocking, so I stripped it all off and sent out to the tanners for fine new lambskin. Old Arthur grumbled at the cost when he saw the bill, but like I says, no one wants rotten oysters chopped up and served as caviar. Two of the main shafts needed replacing, and the gears were twisted out of shape, but I got strong arms and I know what I’m doing with a hammer and a vice. I salvaged what I could and replaced the rest, and by the end of it all she had the prettiest pins as ever graced the boards in the London Variety, both inside and out. I seen Miss Vesta Tilley on the stage as many times as I can scrape up the pennies, both as Burlington Bertie and as principal boy in the pantomime, and I seen Miss Lottie Collins dance to Ta-ra-ra-Boom-de-ay too, and lovely legs they may have, but they ain’t nothing on Miss Pandora’s, after I’d been to work on her.
“Seems a shame to cover ‘em in petticoats,” I said, as I stretched the new skin over the mechanics and fastened it up. “Lord, but you’re a lovely one, you are.” My eye seemed to catch a movement off to one side, and I thought for a moment her eyelids had fluttered again, but it must just have been the flickering of the candle.
“Hodgkins?” Old Arthur called into the workshop. “Yer tea’s getting cold. Come and eat, for Gawd’s sake. Yer lady-love ain’t going nowhere.”
“Goodnight, Miss Pandora,” I whispered, for I was already calling her that, when we were alone. “And sweet dreams. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Weeks it was I worked on her—I don’t say all the time, mind, as we’d plenty of other calls on us. There’s always something as wants fixing for them as can afford it. Mechanical housemaids, sweeps’ boys, even a false nose for some syphilitic toff what’d got stuck on sneezing. We always tells ‘em, they ain’t designed for so much snuff, but what toff wants to listen to a tinkerer and his lad telling him to curb his pleasures?
Miss Pandora, though, she was my labour of love, and I was at her side all the hours I could spare. I spoke to her while I worked. It can be a lonely lot, hunched over a workbench all hours, barely seeing the light of day, and the more I told her of my hopes and my dreams, the more real she became to me. It made me want to weep sometimes, I’ll not deny, for here I was pouring my heart and my soul into her, all so we could sell her off to some brute who’d like as not mistreat her as bad as her last owner had.
Her face needed some work—all squashed on one side, it was—so I took my chance while old Arthur was sleeping off the gin and worked on both sides, making her more beautiful than she had been before. Just a few subtle changes, like a little more lamb’s wool stuffing in her cheeks, so’s if the toff what had her before should happen to chance across her in her new life, he wouldn’t go recognising her and demanding his property back.
Now, most automata, you see one side of their face, you’ve seen the other, as in a mirror, like, but I don’t hold with that. Makes ‘em look like dolls—not real. Course, there’s some as says that’s just how it should be, but I ain’t one of ‘em, and if you don’t like that, you know where you can shove it. Old Arthur don’t mind what I do, and that’s what counts
, if you ask me, him being my gaffer and all. He knows what I do gets us high prices.
Her neck was all torn up, so I made it new again, with the finest pipes I could craft and the softest leather, graceful as a swan. The perfect pedestal to stand her pretty head upon. Her hair weren’t so bad, so I brung in my little sister Lily, what works as a lady’s maid, to wash them golden tresses and style ‘em, seeing as how what I know about feminine fripperies could be inscribed on the head of a pin without the aid of a magnifying glass. Lily, bless her heart, came bearing a bundle of fine clothes, only slightly worn: cast-offs begged from her lady’s daughter, and they fitted Miss Pandora a treat after a stitch here and a tuck there.
“She’s a pretty one, ain’t she?” says Lily. “What I wouldn’t give to be dressing a looker like this every day, instead of the old battleaxe I work for.” She don’t talk like that when she’s working, Lily don’t. She had to learn to talk proper for her lady, which is one more reason I could put up with old Arthur’s moods, and his drinking, and his farts, and be glad of it because apprenticing to him meant I never had to go into service and learn how to be polite.
Lily gives me a nudge in the ribs. “Bet you’ll be sorry to see her go when she’s all finished, Harr.”
And I said nothing, cos much as I might not like it, she was right.
* * * *
There was only one thing left to do, once Miss Pandora had been fixed up and made perfect, and that was to wind her up and set her going. I couldn’t bear to do it that night, for the sooner she was going, the sooner she would be going, so I laid my hand upon her perfect cheek and told her, “Sleep well, Miss Pandora, and I’ll wake you in the morning.” I’d have sneaked a kiss, too, but it ain’t right to take advantage of them as can’t speak for themselves.
It must have been the motion of my hand that made her eyelids flutter once more.
The next day I bit that bullet, took out the silver key I’d fashioned for her windings, and set it into the concealed socket at the nape of her graceful neck. I turned it quick, before I could talk myself out of it. Then I took out the key, covered up the socket and stood back, as her eyes flicked open for the first time since we’d met.
I had on my spectacles with the loupe attached, all the better to see you with, my dear, as my old mum would say, and Miss Pandora gasped when her eyes first focussed on me. Pretty eyes they were too, deep violet, rare as hens’ teeth in nature. “Don’t you fret, Miss,” I said, my voice not half as soothing as old Arthur’s nor half as gin-rough, neither. I took off my spectacles and laid them on the worktop.
Didn’t seem to matter to her one way or the other. She smiled, her pretty lips plump as ripe cherries, and blinked a few times. “You mended me?”
Her voice…Well, if you’ve seen Miss Pandora Piper conquer the boards at the Cri, you’ll know what her voice is like. A lark what’s been fed on pure golden honey all its life, is how I’ve heard it described, and it may be a fancy-arse way of talking but I wouldn’t say it was wrong, neither. Reminded me of music, but not the gaudy tones of a barrel organ, nor yet the strident notes of a pub piano. Posh music, like I heard once when I sneaked into the opera house by the back door, before some git with brass buttons sent me packing with a ringing ear and a boot in the seat of my pants. Like the tunes played by the old blind bloke who stood with his violin on the street corner when I was little, till one winter it got so cold they found him frozen to death, his bow still in his hand and half a crown he’d never spend in his hat. I can still remember how I felt, to find out people broke and couldn’t never be fixed.
Didn’t seem right, me speaking back with my commonplace voice to someone what sounded like that. I muttered something—I think it was, “Would’ve been a crying shame not to,”—and she smiled even brighter.
“Thank you so much. I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”
My heart dropped like a counterweight, right into my very boots, rough and ill-heeled as they were, because I was going to have to tell her just how old Arthur was planning she’d repay us. And that was by selling her on to some toff just like the one what abused her so dreadfully.
I didn’t know how to say it. And then I saw I didn’t need to, as her face softened, even as the sadness hit her pretty eyes, and she reached out a hand to me, her touch feather-soft on my cheek. “It’s quite all right. I understand. You have a living to make.”
“But it ain’t all right!” Lord help me, it flew out of my mouth like a cuckoo from a clock. “It ain’t fair, you getting sold on to someone what won’t care for you. Like…like a piece of meat.”
“But that’s the thing. If I were a piece of meat, it would be different. But I’m made of cogs and springs, and my heart doesn’t beat, it ticks.”
“Don’t make you less of a person,” I told her, fierce as I’d ever been. Fiercer even than when I was a nipper and young Tom Colly told me I’d no call to be wearing trousers, and he’d have ‘em off me, so he would. I sent him packing with a flea in his ear, right enough. And without his trousers, his bare arse pale and pimpled in the fierce winter cold. Even with all that was going on, I still smiled at the memory.
“You’re very handsome when you smile,” she said, and I snapped back to the present as if I’d been pulled by a wire.
“You don’t know what you’re saying. I ain’t ‘andsome.” I muttered it, my face burning and pointed at my boots.
“I would have said, beautiful, but I wasn’t sure if you’d like me to call you that.”
And that was when I realised old Arthur was in the workshop, because he heaved a huge sigh that made him cough, and said, “Lord love a duck. I thought you’d fixed her?”
I spun on my heel. “Mr Tunstall?”
He shook his grizzled head, slow like, for effect. “Gor blimey, Hodgkins, don’t you go losing your wits and all.”
“I ain’t lost me wits!”
“Good. Glad to hear it. Then maybe you can tell me where this one’s wits have gone?” He waved a gnarled hand. “Cos my back may be bent, and my hair—what’s left of it—may be whiter than a country lass before her first trip to town, but there ain’t nothing wrong with my ears, and I just heard her call you a beauty. You!” He let out a wheezing cackle.
Miss Pandora stood up, and put her dainty hands upon her well-shaped hips. “You may be of an age that, of itself, commands respect, Mr Tunstall, but I must beg to take exception to your attitude.”
“Oh, must you, indeed?” Old Arthur gave her the side-eye, and I could tell a “La-di-dah!” wasn’t far off from tripping from his cracked and reddened lips.
I stepped forward, quick like. “You see what I done? I gave her an attitude, and…and a spark, like. So’s she’ll seem like she ain’t made, but born.” And Lord help me, I ain’t never lied so fast in my life, not even about what’s inside these trousers of mine nor how a lad with such narrow shoulders comes to have such a fine, manly chest.
Old Arthur fixed his beady eye on me. “And what’s the point of that, then? You can’t go sellin’ natural born people. It’s a sin.”
“No, but you can put them to work,” Miss Pandora jumped in, sprightly like.
“And won’t it be grand, knowing as how you’ve fooled ‘em all?” I added, shoving both hands behind my back so’s he wouldn’t see I’d crossed my fingers.
Old Arthur stroked his stubble. “Don’t need no more tinkerers, not here we don’t, and who’d respect a man in our trade as took on a girl apprentice?” He gave me the eye at that, and I got all cold and hot at once.
“I’ve got other talents,” Miss Pandora says, pert as you please.
“I ain’t denying that, girl, but I’m a respectable tradesman.”
“I can dance. And I can sing.” Then she stilled, and her smile faltered, and she shot me a look as if to say, At least, I used to be able to.
Lord love the curmudgeonly bastard, but Arthur wasn’t having none of that. “Now then, now then. No doubting young Hodgkins here. Trained him up mesel
f, I did. So let’s hear you.”
I could have kissed the old git, right on his whiskers, yellow with baccy as they were. And then I couldn’t do nothing but stare, mouth hanging open like its hinges were broke, as Miss Pandora let out a pure, low note that hit me right where I lived. Slowly, so slowly I almost couldn’t tell it was happening, her voice rose, until it soared like a nightingale old Arthur had in for fixing the first month I was ‘prenticed. He told me it was based on a real bird, but I ain’t never seen one, nor heard it neither, so you’ll have to take his word on that.
That mechanical nightingale gave the sweetest song I’d ever heard, back then, but listening to Miss Pandora now made it sound like the croaking of an old crow what’s been picking at a dead rat in the gutter. Miss Pandora’s voice was music itself, and there weren’t nothing in the world that weren’t a pale imitation.
And then she stopped singing, and laid a hand on her throat, and I swear her eyes was shining as if they was full of tears, and she looked at me. “Did you do that? Because I’ve never sounded like that before. You must truly be a master of your craft.”
Old Arthur puffed out his chest. “Taught the lad all he knows. And I don’t mind saying, he’s coming close to equalling his old gaffer, ain’tcha, lad?” He cuffed me on the shoulder, and his eyes were moist and all, so I bit back the comment about him being a windbag and a sot who’d not done a full day’s work since the moment I’d grasped which end of a screwdriver was which.
“So we’re going to keep her, Mr Tunstall?” I said, hopeful like. “Get her onto the stage?”
Arthur nodded. “And she can sing for our supper. I like it. I like it. When a man gets to my advanced age”—for he’d never see forty again—”he likes to know as he’ll have a reliable form of income for when he’s in his dotage, and this young lady—”
“Miss Pandora Piper,” I puts in, and she smiles at me, like it’s the best name she ever had.
“—looks set to be the comfort of my old age. Not in any indecorous sense, mind,” he added quickly, no doubt seeing our widened eyes. “I’m a man of morals.”
