The Unforgiving City

by Maggie Joel

  Was this her then? And was she a beauty? No, decidedly she was not, but was there something—what? Her face was, perhaps, a little unusual, her bearing not that of a lowly woman at all, for she carried herself with purpose—was it this then? Eleanor did not know. It was so fleeting, her sighting of the woman. An impression, no more.

  Miss V. Trent now stooped to place her door key inside the brass pot of the largest of the oversized ferns. She straightened herself up and adjusted her gloves, took a quick, sharp breath and departed down the wide staircase.

  Eleanor did not move. She did not speak. The words she had prepared and rehearsed were gone as Miss Trent was gone. She stared at her hand on the rounded ivory handle of her parasol, at the hem of her coat as it brushed the floor of the lift. She put out a hand to the side of the lift to feel its cold metallic reassurance but her fingers felt nothing. She felt her powerlessness as she had once or twice experienced grief. It washed over her, sweeping aside all else and leaving her without a breath in her body. She had thought herself stronger than this, but somehow her husband’s betrayal felt like her own failure.

  Downstairs the front door opened and then closed.

  She wrenched shut the lift doors and stabbed her hand at the button, and the lift lurched as it began its labouring descent.

  Miss Trent—if indeed it was she—now proceeded on foot. She made her way in a surprisingly short time to the end of the street and turned into a busier road, heading west. She was hurrying, but where or to whom Miss Trent hurried one could only speculate, or one might if one was not entirely consumed with keeping up with her, at a discreet distance of some twenty yards or so, as Eleanor was.

  Miss Trent skirted the wharves and entered the Domain where, on this sunny morning, carriages circled at a leisurely pace and young ladies strolled arm in arm and, in warmer seasons, couples picnicked. But Miss Trent did not stroll, nor did she strike a leisurely pace, and she certainly did not pause to picnic or to gaze at the young men in shirtsleeves noisily playing an unseasonal game of cricket. She traversed the Domain in a surprisingly short time and emerged at the rear of the hospital and onto Macquarie Street. She continued onwards until she reached the tram stop at Elizabeth Street. A green-and-cream-liveried tram approached and trundled to a halt and Miss Trent stepped on board.

  Eleanor, some paces behind, would have lost her quarry right there had not a fraught young woman of the lower classes with a baby at her breast and two resistant little boys at her skirts spent such a time boarding that Eleanor had time to catch up and enter the tram by its rear door. Here she took a seat and, because she wore a veil and no other woman on the tram—or, indeed, on any tram—wore such a thing, every pair of eyes at once flew to her. Except those of Miss Trent. She sat a few rows in front and seemed intent only on her own thoughts. Eleanor fixed her gaze on Miss Trent’s vulgar little hat and where they were bound she did not know, but she paid a fare to the conductor that he did not challenge and resigned herself to the ride.

  The tram continued on its way down Elizabeth Street for a time before swinging into Oxford Street so that it seemed Miss Trent’s pressing appointment must, after all, be in the pleasant and leafy eastern part of the city. But abruptly the tram turned south down Crown Street and in no time at all they were in Surry Hills, and the elegant four-storey houses and newly built offices became, instead, the mean streets and warehouses of the poorer part of the city, and suddenly Miss Trent’s appointment took on a very different hue altogether.

  Just before the tram reached Cleveland Street Miss Trent stood up and, as the tram slowed, stepped off. A moment later Eleanor followed.

  This was a place of market stalls, of street sellers pushing their wares before them in barrows, of public houses and places purporting to sell gin and very little else. The window of a butcher’s shop on the corner was broken and glass littered the pavement and was crunched beneath the feet of the passing people. Beside the butcher’s was a tobacconist’s and a small non-conformist church tucked in between a pawnbroker and a dusty antiquarian bookshop, and on the far side of the street an apothecary and a doctor’s rooms, all of which, if not exactly prosperous, did at least suggest an air of ordinary mercantile respectability amid the poverty. The women who inhabited this part of the city wore shapeless, grime-encrusted garments and clutched parcels of shopping or small children or wares for sale, and the men wore boots that let in the daylight. They slouched against walls and on corners and regarded Eleanor in a way that made it clear she was the interloper. A smell hung over the place of three-day-old fish and discarded oyster shells, of cheap gin and cheaper tobacco, of straw and sweating horses and manure.

  But all of this was of a moment’s impression, for already Miss Trent had crossed Crown Street, dodging between an overloaded drayman’s cart and a timber merchant’s wagon and avoiding the horse droppings, looking to left and right, then going into the doctor’s rooms.

  This was a surprise, though no more so than if she had gone into the apothecary or the pawnbroker or, come to that, the small church. For none of these places suggested appointments to which one hurried. But it was to the doctor’s rooms that Miss Trent had gone, entering down the laneway between the bookshop and the grocer’s, for the doctor’s rooms were, it appeared, upstairs and reached by way of the laneway and a dark flight of stairs.

  Miss Trent had gone and Eleanor stood for a moment, pondering the sign: DR J.M.H. LEAVIS, MD.

  What now? Already her mad dash after this woman, her journey to this part of the city, seemed absurd. The powerlessness bubbled up again and she stood in the street, lost.

  A hansom cab sidled into Crown Street clearly in need of a fare and Eleanor hailed it and climbed in. She called out an address to the man and sat back, having no wish to be seen, and was relieved when the driver urged his horse on and in a short time she was leaving Crown Street and Surry Hills behind, heading north once more.

  When at last she dared to turn and look out of the window, the cab was passing a young woman hurrying along the street. A domestic judging by the woman’s uniform, and at large, perhaps, without her employer’s knowledge. The servant looked just like Alice—but from behind they all did, and Eleanor reached up to pull down the little blind.

  She returned to the same Woolloomooloo street, its faded mid-century elegance no less noticeable and no less poignant in the middle of the day than it had been earlier in the morning. There seemed to be not a soul about and at the shuttered windows of the silent houses, each set in its overgrown oasis of lawn and shrubbery, no one stirred.

  On this second visit Eleanor ordered the cab pull up right outside the house and this time she entered boldly through the front door, she took the wide staircase rather than the lift. She reached the first floor and she stooped beside the brass pot and her fingers found the key at once. She stood and slid the key into the lock—a cheap key, she saw, and a cheap lock, but suitable, no doubt, for someone who had little of value and little worth stealing. The door swung open and she stepped inside, pushing the door shut with a click behind her.

  For a time her breath came unevenly, for there is nothing so thrilling or terrifying as standing illicitly in another’s home.

  She stood quite still, listening but hearing only the steady tick of a clock whose whereabouts she could not identify. And because there was this almost-silence it was the smells that she noticed: old timber and crumbling plaster and ageing rugs that had not been properly beaten in a while. It was a smell of not-quite-dry laundry and furniture polish and, faintly, of mothballs and cheap soap. Smells familiar and yet here, in this place, utterly alien. She reached out a hand. At her side was a narrow console table on which lay a worked brass tray, a repository for keys or letters, though it held nothing now, and beside it a cut-glass vase, though it too showed no evidence of having been recently used. The hallway was little more than an alcove and before her the apartment opened up into a generous room. She took in the crowd of mismatching tables and chairs, some of them quite
good, others cheap and worthless, so that one got the impression an assortment of relatives, of varying means and tastes, had all died at once, leaving the apartment’s occupant the contents of their homes. On the walls, perhaps in an attempt to minimise the effect of the oppressive crimson wallpaper, were a collection of reproduction Landseer horses and stags and pre-Raphaelite women in various states of religious ecstasy. But there was nothing here of a personal nature. This furniture must surely predate Miss Trent by thirty or more years.

  Eleanor turned about and saw a large fireplace set in the back wall, its hearth hidden behind an ornately worked iron fireguard, beside it an ash bucket and a collection of pokers and paper spills, and on the mantel two empty brass candlesticks and the clock, a small gold carriage clock, the source of the loud ticking. She walked over to the hearth but it was swept clean or had not been used for some time. Still nothing.

  Where was Miss Trent in this room? She picked up the carriage clock, which looked to be of good quality though utterly unsuited to fill the space on the mantel, which wanted a much larger timepiece than this little thing. She turned it over and saw an engraving: To my little Verity with all my love—your dearest Papa, 1876.

  And here at last was Miss Trent. But Verity, and not Victoria at all. This required a rethink. Eleanor had pictured the parents quite distinctly but now they became vague and insubstantial. Verity. It was rather a cheap name, a music hall name. And yet this clock was charming.

  She replaced it on the mantel and saw the doorway to a second room. She crossed the room and opened the door. And perhaps because this door was closed and because, therefore, one did not know what was contained within—though one might guess—she held back even as she pushed open the door and viewed the room beyond. It was a bedroom, as of course it must be, and she understood that this was the reason for her reluctance. This second room was much smaller, though a bay window with a cushioned seat built into it and overlooking the garden below gave it a charm and sense of proportion. A large fireplace opposite the window was similarly swept clean with a mantel similarly free of objects. And between was a chest of drawers and a bureau with one or two books on it, a trunk on the floor near the door, and a bed.

  The bed. It was a simple enough affair, the bedstead and footer made of plain iron struts painted black and topped with brass, and a counterpane heavily embroidered. Another counterpane beneath it and the corners of a rug testified to how cold the room got in these winter months—particularly if one did not light the fire. Eleanor had not moved from the doorway. Aside from her mother’s she had never set foot in another woman’s bedroom—unless one considered the servants’ quarters in attics, which one rarely had occasion to visit and were not the same thing at all. And so the utter strangeness of it struck her. Even the smell was different in here. It smelled more of her and less of the house, of other people’s furnishings. But what was it? Soap again and rose water or lavender or some kind of potpourri and a smell of both washed bodies and unwashed bodies. She looked at the bed and felt faintly nauseated. Its plain iron bedstead and embroidered counterpane swam before her eyes.

  In a rush she went to the bed and flung back the covers, layer after layer, until she had revealed the mattress. Stains—were they? Or just shadows, just laundry marks? She could not decide. She turned away and put her hands to her face and found her face cold and her hands cold too. She pressed her fingers into her eyes until lights danced before her. She dropped her hands to her sides. She made herself turn around and face the chaotic pile of covers, the pillows spilled onto the floor, the mattress, laid shockingly bare, exposing a part of someone’s life that only a servant should ever see. And slowly, methodically she replaced the covers, she retrieved the discarded pillows, she returned the bed to its original state, and what did it matter if a stranger had viewed your most intimate secrets if you never found out about it?

  Would one know if another pair of hands had gone through one’s most intimate things, if another pair of eyes had viewed one’s most private secrets? Eleanor felt soiled by it and a wish to wash her hands came over her, very intensely.

  Her eyes went to the books on the bureau—a small Bible, not new but not well thumbed either, and three or four volumes of poetry and a book on modern painting by Mr Ruskin. Was this the normal sort of fare for a woman such as Miss Verity Trent? She did not know. The only thing left in the room was the trunk by the wall, a great old sea trunk complete with leather straps and some previous owner’s initials stamped on it. It was unlocked and she kneeled and lifted the lid to find nothing more than empty boxes and tissue paper. But, no, for right at the bottom, and wrapped in tissue so that one had to be careful not to tear it, were two photographs in cheap frames. One was a family group—an elderly man, a tradesman heavily bewhiskered in Sunday best, and his wife, petite with her hair piled high and ill at ease in a new gown, and their daughter, sixteen or thereabouts, with a clear smiling face made stiff and formal by the arduous photographic process. The second photograph was a young couple. It was the same girl, a few years older, now with a young man, bowler-hatted and suited, a drooping moustache, a waistcoat and a stiff white collar—a bank clerk, perhaps, or a draper or a draftsman. He was proud, though, it was there in his eyes, and perhaps this was because of the fine-looking young woman on his arm. And she was fine looking, unsmiling but serene, her chin lifted high, defiant almost in her gaze at the photographer, her composure evident even as her face was locked in the agony of a long exposure, frozen in that moment for all time.

  Eleanor stepped back. It was her, Miss Trent, in both photographs, but who was the bowler-hatted young man?

  And for the first time she thought, Is this the wrong woman? Have I come to the wrong flat? And then she thought, But why are these things put away in the bottom of a trunk and not on display on the mantel? These people were dead, then, or they were something to be hidden away. Or perhaps both. She carefully wrapped them again and placed them at the bottom of the trunk and replaced the tissue paper and empty boxes and closed the lid. She stood up. She looked around the room. Was this the wrong woman? She did not know. She felt keenly the precariousness of her position.

  And then she saw it. On the bureau so that she had almost missed it: a gold tiepin. She walked over to the bureau, not taking her eyes from the tiny gold object. She knew before she had picked it up and studied it that it had his initials engraved on the head. She had gone to the jeweller herself in Hunter Street to make her commission and a man, an elderly Jew with a pronounced Mittel Europe accent and a straggling greying beard, had put a glass to his eye and peered at the tiepin and nodded and said, ‘Ja, ja,’ and she had returned the following day to pick it up.

  And here they were, the initials: A.D.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THIS IS NOT IMPERIAL RUSSIA

  Alasdair instructed his cab to drop him in Macquarie Street. From here he walked the short distance to Richmond Terrace, an attractive avenue overlooking the Domain but whose unfortunate proximity to Parliament House meant that its row of elegant mid-century merchant’s houses were gradually being bought up and converted into ministerial outposts. The offices of the Secretary for Public Monies were here, squeezed into a narrow and already rather cramped three-storey terrace. It was a temporary measure, Alasdair presumed, though whether temporary because larger and more appropriate accommodation on Macquarie Street would be forthcoming or because the ministry was itself a temporary measure and would soon cease to exist, the Secretary for Public Monies did not care to speculate.

  There were only thirteen ministerial positions in the Legislative Assembly. When the new ministry had been announced the previous year, the Premier had seized for himself the offices of Colonial Treasurer and Minister for Railways. That left only eleven to be distributed between the other members of the Assembly, and when one took out all the ministries allocated to the various members who had assisted the Premier to get into office and those who had assisted him to stay in office and those who might assist hi
m in the future, this left very few positions indeed for up-and-coming young members who burned with ambition and whose futures were ahead of them but who had very little in the way of political power to wield in the meantime. It meant Alasdair Dunlevy, long-time member for an electorate not too many miles from the city and therefore of moderate importance, had been promised Secretary for Lands and had seen it go to George Drummond-Smith, he had heard rumours he might get Public Works when it had been retained by Charles Booker-Reid, and there had been hints he was next in line for Railways when the Premier himself had grabbed that portfolio.

  Eventually, and only when a member had died suddenly in office, the Premier had appointed him Secretary for Public Monies. Alasdair had been provided with a small staff and this office, the house in Richmond Terrace.