by Maggie Joel
‘I shall do no such thing—’
‘Go! Get out now!’ And Alasdair grabbed the man by his collar and shoved him bodily out of the apartment and slammed the door after him.
It was blood. Her blood. He could not know it for certain, though it seemed the obvious conclusion. She had hurt herself or been hurt. But what kind of injury caused such a wound? He walked again about the room and back into the bedroom, going to each of her things—searching for what, he did not know.
But there was nothing.
He went to the chest of drawers in her bedroom where, oddly, he now recalled leaving his gold tiepin on his final visit—but it was not there. He stood staring at the spot where he had placed it, uncertain now of himself, uncertain of everything.
He tried the French doors and the windows but they were firmly locked. The front door to the apartment had been locked. It seemed to imply no one had forcibly entered her rooms, that she had, instead, simply gone out. Or let someone in.
He left the apartment, wary of the man, Orange, but he had gone, or was waiting downstairs in the street till he might reclaim his client’s property. Alasdair went to the door of the apartment next door and rapped on it, throwing to the wind the caution, the subterfuge he had employed all these months.
It was opened at once by a tiny, frail old woman with milky eyes and scant hair and a pinched face that hinted at straitened circumstances. The promptness with which she answered his knock suggested she had been standing just inside the door. And perhaps she often stood there. Perhaps by standing in such a position she could hear all of what occurred on the landing outside.
‘Who are you? What do you want?’ she demanded in a high, querulous voice. Her milky eyes squinted and did not quite find his face.
‘Do excuse this intrusion, madam. I am enquiring after the whereabouts of the young lady next door, Miss Trent.’
‘I know nothing of this person and I certainly do not involve myself in other people’s business,’ the woman retorted, her sightless eyes scouring for him feverishly but unable to settle. ‘Kindly remove yourself from my premises at once.’ And the elderly lady—for she was a lady, or had been, which perhaps made her circumstances a little sadder—retreated behind her door with all the furious indignation of one habitually frightened and almost always alone.
The stupidity of the old woman—for Alasdair, in his rage, saw only stupidity where another might have seen fear and loneliness—almost caused him to pound an angry fist on the slammed door, and for a brief time this fury swelled and enveloped him. It abated as swiftly, leaving him deflated and without a plan. He turned bitterly away.
Almost at once another door opened directly across the hall, and a hand appeared and, somewhat surprisingly, signalled to him. The hand belonged to a young woman of bookish appearance, her russet hair severely restrained and a pair of rather ugly wire spectacles perched on her nose behind which two very intense eyes stared at him. She wore a faded slate-grey silk morning dress that had seen the end of too many darning needles but she seemed unconscious of the fact, or indifferent. Alasdair went to her and at her behest stepped inside her doorway. She looked to the left and right and then behind her, as though there was another in the apartment whom she did not wish to overhear her.
‘I am Miss Tiptree,’ she hissed, as though that explained all.
‘Good day to you, madam—’
‘Hush—please! Mama is asleep but she sleeps lightly. You are enquiring about Miss Trent? I thought so. You have not heard, then, what happened a few days ago?’ And not awaiting his reply: ‘It was on Saturday, very early in the morning, that we heard a commotion. For that is the only way I can describe it. Mama and I were not yet breakfasted when we heard the noise—or noises, really …’
‘Please, Miss Tiptree, what happened?’
‘A police constable—or, rather, two police constables!—came to the house, came specifically to Miss Trent’s apartment. They could not get in, for she did not answer, she was already gone out, or so we believed, but we let them in—’
‘Let them in? How?’
‘I have a spare key. Miss Trent entrusted me with it. For emergencies. This was the emergency—though I confess when one is handed a spare key for an emergency one does not really anticipate there will be any such emergency, does one?’
‘No indeed. But Miss Trent?’
‘I was made to wait outside—indeed, I was urged by the constable to return to my rooms, but I confess I did not. I lingered, as who would not?’
Miss Tiptree paused here to blink rapidly a number of times.
‘They closed the door, but after a short time one of the policemen emerged and departed, leaving the other inside. Alone, you understand, with Miss Trent. I nearly went to her aid but I did not like to as they had bade me gone. At any rate, the first constable returned after some little time and brought with him a nurse and a doctor, or such I took them to be, and after a short time again they all emerged and this time poor Miss Trent was with them and I cried out in dismay when I saw her, for she was in a dreadful way, quite unconscious and needing to be carried. What the matter was, nor how long she had been in such a way, I cannot say, nor what transpired afterwards, for they did not return and there was no one to ask. It has been quite a mystery. Though …’
And here she paused, wrinkling her brow and placing a finger on her bridge of her spectacles.
‘There was an incident last night. A drunken man came to her door and then, I believe, later attempted to break in via the rear garden—but whether it was the same man outside as the man who came to the door, I cannot say.’
She faltered as it seemed to dawn on her that the man who had come to the door last night was quite likely the man she now faced in her doorway. She looked at him doubtfully, and withdrew a little into her hallway.
Alasdair almost advanced after her but held back. ‘But where did they take her—do you know?’
‘It would be the hospital, would it not? The Sydney Hospital.’
‘And she was alive, you said, when they brought her out?’
‘Yes, to be sure. But that was three days ago.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CINNAMON BISCUITS
That afternoon three ladies called for Mrs Dunlevy: Mrs Pyke, breathless in a hat crowded with clusters of glazed fruit; Mrs Rothe, who had never been breathless in her life, magnificent in white lace and ruffles; and Miss Dempsey in a prim white blouse and skirt. Like a shop girl, thought Alice, who was doubtful about any woman who kept house for an unmarried brother rather than find a husband for herself, though she liked the brother, Mr Ned Dempsey, as he had smiled at her once and placed a coin in the palm of her hand. In the drawing room Mrs Dunlevy waited with the silver tea things and Mrs Flynn’s cinnamon biscuits, freshly baked that morning.
‘That Miss Dempsey do not like my cinnamon biscuits,’ observed Mrs Flynn darkly when Alice had returned to the kitchen and relayed the names of the callers to her. ‘She complained last time they were not moist enough for her liking and though she liked cinnamon as a rule, she did not care for it in a biscuit.’
And Mrs Flynn, who was in the midst of preparing a duck for that evening’s dinner, brought her chopping knife down on the neck of the unfortunate fowl with a violent thwack! The feathered head with its glassy sightless eyes rolled from the table and dropped with barely a thud onto the tiled floor at their feet. She flicked the severed head aside with the toe of her boot, grabbed a handful of feathers and proceeded to tear them from the unprotesting corpse of the duck. Alice stood and watched as the pile of discarded feathers grew and the grey, mottled flesh of the bird was revealed.
Mrs Flynn had not said this morning, nor at any time since last night, ‘Where is the baby gone to, Alice?’ She had not made any allusion to the unusual turn that events had taken, except to say, ‘You did not clean all the pots and pans nor take out the slops last night, Alice. I had to do them myself this morning and my knees are gone now because of it.’
Alice had not cleaned all the pots; she had not taken out the slops. She would work twice as hard today. But it was not just the kitchen. The silver tea set that Mrs Dunlevy was at this moment offering to her callers was dulled where she had failed to give it its weekly polish. The clean linen was piled in unruly heaps about the house and was not put away and the bedding was not properly aired and in some rooms the dust lay thick and undisturbed. As each task went undone Alice felt the weight of it pull at her limbs and thump in her head, and her exhaustion was such that the very skin covering her muscles ached. But it could not be helped. There was Milli. There was the baby.
There was, besides, a nick on her throat where a razor had pricked her skin and there was also this second mark, much deeper, and unseeable (unless one peered very closely and no one did peer closely for Alice was a servant) that had been made in the dark by the two men holding her life in their hands and tossing it carelessly between them as one might a trapped fly, choosing to release her simply because it was in their power to trap her again whenever they wished. In the last five years Alice Nimrod had become complacent; she had forgotten the tenuous and fleeting nature of life. To be reminded it of now had left its mark on her.
The drawing room bell rang.
‘That will be her now,’ said Mrs Flynn, pausing grimly in her task. ‘Wanting something else instead of the biscuits. Wanting a sponge cake or a muffin, as if such things grew on trees and did not have to be measured and mixed and baked and set on a tray to cool.’
It was an inconvenience to Mrs Flynn, always having to prepare food, always having to cook. She shook her head and resumed her plucking.
In the drawing room the ladies were seated, two on the settee, one on the upright armchair and Mrs Dunlevy in the other armchair nearest to the little side table upon which the tea things were arranged.
‘Her mistake was to confront her husband,’ said Mrs Rothe, and, ‘She was the housekeeper!’ exclaimed Mrs Pyke.
Mrs Pyke was perched on the very edge of the settee, a teacup and saucer balanced on her lap. She fell silent as Alice entered. They all fell silent. The feeling in the room was sharp and thrilling and rather terrible, as though something had been said or done that could not be undone.
‘Alice, see if Mrs Flynn has any cake or muffins,’ said Mrs Dunlevy. ‘Miss Dempsey does not care for cinnamon.’
‘It is not the cinnamon per se,’ corrected Miss Dempsey. ‘It is the presence of cinnamon in a biscuit I find not to my liking.’
Miss Dempsey was a slight figure in her prim white blouse, very upright, but it was the uprightness of a thin layer of ice that would shatter if a single drop of rain fell on it. The flesh of her face was stretched tightly over muscles constantly contracting and releasing, eyes alighting and darting away and alighting afresh someplace else. Mrs Pyke had exclaimed, ‘She was the housekeeper!’ and Miss Dempsey’s discomfort, her horror, was writ large. Miss Dempsey took refuge in the failing of the cinnamon biscuits.
‘Told you, didn’t I?’ said Mrs Flynn with grim satisfaction when presented with this request. ‘She can have the last of the almond cake from last week, and if it is stale and nasty I shall not be the one to blame for it.’
And she cut a slice of this almond cake, which Alice duly delivered, though to enter the room in which the four ladies sat induced in her such a reluctance she afterwards fled to the solitariness of the dining room. It unsettled her, this sudden reluctance, and she could not account for it. Mrs Pyke had exclaimed, She was the housekeeper! and Miss Dempsey had spurned the cinnamon biscuits and they sat, the four ladies, perched on the very cusp of their chairs like birds about to take flight.
In the dining room the lunch things were only partly cleared away, another task unfinished. Alice moved quickly, though her body was sluggish and unwilling. She saw Mr Dunlevy’s newspaper on the table where he had left it that morning and she opened the newspaper, though this was not a part of her duties. She cast her eye over the very pages, the very words Mr Dunlevy had cast his eyes over and there was no difference between them, Mr Dunlevy the parliamentarian and Alice Nimrod the servant, for they both read the newspaper, they both saw the same things. Or so it seemed to Alice, for whom the unfinished and unattended tasks of the day nagged only vaguely in some distant room. She read advertisements for patent medicines and agricultural tools and ladies’ corsets, advertisements for men seeking employment and other men seeking workers, for possessions lost and possessions found. And this was what Mr Dunlevy read! It was extraordinary to her. She saw—though she had not sought it—an advertisement that read, Childless couple seeks baby to adopt or to care for. Good Christian home. Reply to Mrs Flowers at the address given. She saw that there were many other similar advertisements beside this one: more couples wishing to adopt, and they were all good Christians, it seemed, and women seeking couples who wished to adopt. These women too were all good Christians. And so were their babies, though this was implied rather than stated. So many babies, so many childless couples. A veritable trade in babies was going on amid the pages of Mr Dunlevy’s newspaper. But this one, this Mrs Flowers, was the only one that offered to care for and not simply adopt. At a cost.
For the first time, Alice saw this wondrous thing, her sister’s baby, that only the day before she had snatched from the courthouse with no thought as to the consequences and for which she now found herself solely responsible, as the burden it surely was. And would be for the next three years.
She had failed, she realised, before she had even begun, for she could not hope to keep it. But she would not give it up! Not her sister’s child, she would not! But if she could send it away to safety, to be cared for, to have a better chance than she and Milli had had, perhaps, even to be loved—
Alice tore the page from the newspaper, folded it and thrust it into the sleeve of her uniform. She straightened her cap and smoothed down her apron and emerged into the hallway to find her eyes brimming with tears and a lump in her throat because she had thought of her mother who had been dead and gone these last five years but who had come back to her all in a rush, so that the loss of her, just as though it were happening all over again, was almost too much to bear.
But no one noticed because Mrs Dunlevy’s guests were departing.
Indeed, Mrs Dunlevy had about her the look of someone held together by tissue paper. But all she said was, ‘Alice, please inform Mrs Flynn the almond cake was a little stale.’
‘Yes, madam.’ Alice stood at the front door and handed each of the ladies their coat and hat and gloves and mufflers, and Mrs Pyke smiled and said, ‘Thank you, Alice,’ Mrs Rothe took Mrs Dunlevy’s hand and gave it a quick squeeze as though she were at the funeral of someone she did not know very well, and Miss Dempsey, whose brother had once placed a coin in Alice’s palm, left first because she had just seen a cab go past and wished to be the one to secure it.
‘Gone, have they?’ said Mrs Flynn standing over a great steaming dish at the stove and waving the steam from her face.
‘Yes, Mrs Flynn, and Mrs Dunlevy said to tell you the almond cake was very nice.’
‘Nice, indeed!’ said Mrs Flynn, who thrived not on compliments but on grievances. ‘What is that you have, Alice?’ she added as a sheet of newsprint fluttered to the floor and lay at Alice’s feet.
‘’Tis nothing,’ cried Alice, snatching at it, but Mrs Flynn, who had earlier complained that her knees were gone, had already stooped to retrieve it and was peering short-sightedly at the tiny newsprint. She turned the page over and over again, waiting for its mysteries to reveal themselves to her. After a lengthy perusal, she placed the page on the table without a word, an advertisement for a revolutionary corset design uppermost and, when she saw this, primly turning the sheet the other side up. Mrs Flynn had lived a hard life in an unforgiving city and was not easily shocked, but an adv
ertisement for a ladies’ undergarment was a step too far.
Alice said nothing. She left the kitchen. She went from room to room. She thought of the baby whose future she could not see beyond the wretchedness and squalor that was the breast of Mrs Renfrew. When she returned to the kitchen the page from the newspaper lay where Mrs Flynn had placed it, still with its revolutionary corsets and its Mrs Flowers. Alice wished she could be left alone to do her work in peace, but this Mrs Flowers had wormed her way into Alice’s head and would not be dislodged, so when Mrs Flynn went for a moment into the scullery Alice reclaimed the page of the newspaper, folding it carefully and tucking it once more into her sleeve.
‘You oughta think real careful before you do that, my girl.’
Alice spun around and met the inscrutable and unblinking eyes of the cook, who had re-emerged from the scullery with all the stealth of a housebreaker, looking very much as though she had sprung a trap and was come to claim her spoils.
‘You know what a baby farm is, don’t you?’ Mrs Flynn said.
‘’Course I do! I weren’t born yesterday.’ It was an unfortunate thing to say given the circumstances.
‘You hand that baby over, Alice my girl, along with whatever sum of money they demand of you, and you will never see its face again this side of Paradise, of that you can be sure.’
‘You don’t know that!’ Alice spun away.
But Mrs Flynn would not be silenced. ‘They will do away with it first chance they get,’ she went on with a sort of grisly relish, ‘and they will go on taking your money just as long as they can get away with it. And when at last you get your suspicions they will be off and nothing to show they was ever here except a tiny corpse stuffed in the drain or buried in the yard for the coppers to find a year or two later.’
