Ann Granger (5 page)

‘You didn’t take the child to the workhouse, though, did you?’

‘No,’ he admitted. ‘I would’ve done but they’d been kicking up, been difficult, on the last few times I’d gone there. I thought it better if I stayed clear of them for a bit.’

‘So what did you do with him?’

Watkins drew a deep breath. ‘I took him to King’s Cross station here and left him on a platform. He was as happy as anything looking at the engines. I just let go of his hand and slipped away in the crowd.’

Morris gave a half-repressed growl.

Watkins glanced nervously over his shoulder at the sergeant. ‘I knew he’d be found. That’s Gawd’s truth. I knew he’d be found. I never did the little chap no harm, I swear. You’ve got to believe me!’

‘No harm? What of his terror and bewilderment? What of whose hands he might have fallen into? What awful accident might have happened to him as he wandered unattended among the engines?’ I thundered at him.

‘They’re mostly very respectable folk travelling out of King’s Cross station,’ Watkins objected feebly. ‘And the station staff, they’re very alert.’

‘Yes, fortunately they are. They found him and called the police. He could hardly do more than to babble his own name, Peter, so you thought that you wouldn’t be traced.

‘He was placed temporarily in the care of a woman who fosters children on behalf of the parish. But, following Miss Harris’s complaint to the police, a notice was placed in the evening press, asking for information to assist us in our enquiries. It was read by the husband of the foster mother in question. They feared they had the child in their care and contacted us. Miss Harris was taken to see the child and recognised him.’

Watkins now presented a dejected figure in his sporting attire. ‘There ain’t no justice,’ he mumbled.

‘On the contrary, there is. Think yourself lucky Peter Harris didn’t disappear for good at King’s Cross station because you’d be facing a murder charge right now, most likely. As it is, Peter has been reunited with his mother. She’s found a new, permanent and much more reliable foster home for him. Her present employer, to whom she was obliged to confess the whole story because she’d taken time off to seek her child, was sympathetic and helped her in this.’

‘All’s well that ends well, then, ain’t it?’ declared Watkins, cheering up.

‘Depends what you mean by “well” … and what we mean by it. Jonas Watkins, you are charged, under the Offences against the Person Act of 1861, with the abandonment of a child under two years of age in a manner likely to cause death, injury or other harm.’

His eyes filled with real tears. ‘That’s what happens,’ he said, ‘when you try and help someone.’

I left Morris to deal with the miserable creature and walked out into what is laughingly called fresh air in central London. A hubbub of voices, rattle of wheels, clip-clop of hooves, shrieks and cries of vendors and others, all assaulted my ears. My nose was filled with the familiar miasma of smells. Among the host of other odours I could distinguish the sulphur, coal and oil reek of the engine sheds at the nearby railway terminus. That brought my mind back to Lizzie and to Waterloo; not that it had ever been far away. I wondered if I should call at Mrs Parry’s home and have a word with Simms, the butler. Just to make sure Lizzie got away safely on her journey to Hampshire. But if she hadn’t I’d know soon enough. There was nothing I could do but wait.

Chapter Four

Elizabeth Martin

AS LEFEBRE and I looked about us at our new surroundings, we heard a shout. Hastening towards us was a middle-aged man in the corduroy breeches and leather leggings of a groom, with a bowler hat set square on his head. He raised this as he reached us and puffed, ‘You’ll be the party for Shore House?’

We told him we were.

‘Ah,’ he observed, eyeing our luggage and shaking his head to express his doubt. ‘Then I don’t know if I’ll get both of you and all your bags in the trap. We can but try, however!’ he concluded, cheering up. ‘Lycurgus Greenaway, at your service, sir and miss.’ He set the bowler hat back on his head and struck the roof of it a smart blow with the palm of his hand to make sure it was wedged there. As his head was itself very round and his form short and squat I was irresistibly reminded of a pepper pot.

‘Lycurgus?’ remarked Dr Lefebre. ‘That’s an unusual name.’

‘Ah!’ said Mr Greenaway again. ‘My father was a teetotaller. Very against the demon drink, he was, all his life from a young ’un. He called me Lycurgus after another famous teetotaller, or so he reckoned.’

‘Rather more than that,’ Dr Lefebre told him, ‘although I understand the logic in it. Lycurgus was a king in ancient times. He banned the riotous cult of the god Bacchus and ordered all the vines destroyed.’

Mr Greenaway looked much pleased to hear of this royal connection. ‘Then my old father knew a thing or two. This way, if you please!’

We followed him round a corner into what appeared to be the main street where waiting before a public house patriotically named after the hero of Trafalgar was a trap with facing seats and a perch for the driver. It was harnessed to a dispirited-looking pony with a large head at the end of a ewe-neck. It certainly seemed a very modest vehicle to carry us all and our bags.

‘Oh, dear…’ murmured the doctor.

Lycurgus Greenaway looked mildly embarrassed. ‘Miss Roche sends her apologies, sir, but an axle is broke on the landau and the smith has to fashion a new one.’

‘Can’t be helped, I suppose,’ said Dr Lefebre philosophically.

‘Ah, she’s collapsed all of a heap on the ground,’ said Greenaway, shaking his head mournfully.

We were both alarmed to hear this until we realised that Greenaway referred to the carriage as ‘she’, as sailors refer to a ship, and meant that it and not his employer had collapsed.

‘Now then,’ went on our driver, ‘I’ll pack your bags in first on the floor and then you hop in and take a seat either side. It will be fine if the lady doesn’t mind resting her feet – begging your pardon, miss – on her portmanteau.’

‘Will the pony be able to pull all our weight?’ I asked. ‘Is it very far?’

‘We can go along the shore road or cut across,’ replied Mr Greenaway. ‘I prefer to cut across myself. That way it’s about six mile, give or take a bit, by the shore road near twice that. The road’s rough but I came that way this morning and it’s not cut up. The trap didn’t give hardly a bounce.’

I heard Dr Lefebre beside me give a faint groan. ‘Let’s go by the shorter route,’ he said stoically, ‘if Miss Martin agrees. We may be shaken about,’ he added to me, ‘but I fancy the shore road won’t be much better travelling by that vehicle!’ He gestured with his cane at the trap and the pony, catching sight of the movement, threw up its head and snorted, rolling a white eyeball at us.

‘The shorter journey will be better for the pony,’ I said.

‘Don’t worry about the pony, miss, it’s stronger than it looks,’ declared Greenaway.

It took some minutes to pack us all in during which several drinkers emerged from the
Lord Nelson
and stood, tankard and pipe in hand, to watch and offer advice. They all seemed to know Mr Greenaway well, addressing him in familiar fashion as ‘Lye’. Mr Greenaway senior had perhaps not been so successful in inspiring his offspring to teetotal ways as he might have hoped.

At last, with a lurch, we were off. The party from the public house raised an encouraging cheer. Dr Lefebre removed his hat and saluted them gravely. They appreciated the courtesy and raised another, even louder, huzza.

We then turned a corner and were lost to sight leaving them to talk, probably, of nothing else for the rest of the day.

At first our road was level and followed the shoreline with the water to our left, but then it turned inland and became narrower between densely packed trees. I hoped we met no vehicle coming in the other direction as wayside bracken, dry and brown now in late summer, and brambles heavy with fruit encroached on the highway. It was cool under the branches, for which I was grateful. So we trotted on merrily until we came to the beginning of a fairly steep rise. Greenaway hauled on the reins and we rocked to a halt.

The groom turned on his seat to assess us with a practical eye and announced, ‘I’m not sure, begging the company’s pardon, that the mare can pull the load up the hill. The lady don’t weigh much by the looks of her and can stay where she is, but if you don’t mind, sir, perhaps you would just jump down and you and I will walk the hill.’

‘I’ll get down, too,’ I said at once, not sorry to stretch my legs.

We scrambled from our perches and Greenaway from his. He took the mare’s head and led her forward. The doctor and I fell in behind the trap side by side.

‘Quite like a pair of mourners at a funeral!’ observed Dr Lefebre unexpectedly.

I thought his humour in this instance tasteless, but he was an unpredictable man in all ways.

At the top of the hill we emerged into sunshine and I was surprised to see we had left the belt of trees behind us. Viewed from the water, the whole area had looked thickly forested. In reality the trees only lined the shore. We climbed back into the trap. It was an awkward task for me encumbered with my skirts, even though Dr Lefebre had mounted first in order to reach down his hand. Greenaway solved the problem.

‘Beg pardon for the liberty, miss!’ With that he gave me a hearty shove and I fairly catapulted into the trap and Dr Lefebre’s arms. I found myself grasping his coat; my bonnet fell to the back of my head, saved by its ribbons round my throat, and his beard brushed my face.

We disentangled ourselves with mutual apologies and Greenaway, observing us with some concern, enquired if we were all right. Rather breathlessly we told him we were. I regained my seat and hastily secured my bonnet in its proper place.

‘No harm done, then,’ observed our driver as he clambered back on his perch.

Off we set again, the doctor and I avoiding looking at each other, which was awkward as we sat opposite. Or at least, I didn’t look at him for some minutes, and when I did so, he wasn’t looking at me but studiously at the scenery. At first we passed fields but then our way took us on to a wide expanse of flat heath. Mr Greenaway was keeping his promise to ‘cut across’. I was surprised at the terrain, having assumed the name ‘New Forest’ meant the whole area would be wooded.

‘No, no, miss!’ shouted Mr Greenaway from his perch when the enquiry was relayed to him. ‘Some of it is trees and some of it is heath, but forest is what we call all of it.’

The road now was a dirt one and although it was level enough, the trap rattled and subjected us to constant shaking. Dr Lefebre sat with his malacca cane planted firmly between his feet and his hands resting on the pommel as he had done on the train. The dusty earth was peaty and muffled the sound of the wheels. The pony’s hooves echoed with a dull thud. But the air was clean and fresh and the drive would have been pleasant if it hadn’t been so hot. I regretted the loss of the shady trees. Out here in this bare landscape the sun beat down relentlessly on parched soil. It was dotted with gorse bushes armed with wicked spikes. Earlier in the year, I thought, those unfriendly-looking growths must make a fine golden show. But now even the carpet of mauve heather couldn’t prevent the whole area looking barren.

Winding across the heath I also glimpsed, as we bounced by, various narrow tracks, no wider than to allow a single person to pass along them between the heather. There was no indication where they might lead.

A number of unkempt ponies were grazing on the clumps of sparse grass, some singly or in pairs, occasionally in larger bands. There was no shelter for them and I saw no sign of water. I couldn’t think the owners chose to turn their stock out on such poor pasture and wondered if the animals were wild. I gathered breath and bellowed my question to Greenaway.

‘Not exactly, miss,’ he shouted over his shoulder, waving his whip at the nearest group. ‘There’s folk have the right to graze livestock on the forest. Commoners, we call ’em, and all the ponies belong to a commoner. Pretty soon now they will be rounding them up, what we call the “drift”. They sort them out, and auction some of them off. They are hardy little beasts. You’ll see other animals, if you keep your eyes open, pigs maybe, or a donkey or two. There’s deer in the trees, o’ course.’ He pointed with the whip again, this time to the horizon on our right where woodland began once more.

‘What’s happened here?’ asked Dr Lefebre, as we were passing by a sizeable area of blackened burnt vegetation.

‘Summer fire, sir, we get a few of those, especially when the weather’s been as dry as it has this year. There’s been precious little rain to dampen things down. The gorse and heather go up like a lot of fireworks. It’s a fair old job to beat it out. By the way, if you want to go walking up here, keep an eye open for adders. See that path there?’

He waved his whip at one of the narrow tracks I’d noticed. ‘The ponies make those. They always pass the same way to where they know they can find water. Year after year they’ve been doing it, why, going back hundreds of years I don’t doubt, all plodding along the same trail made by those that have gone before ’em. Now then, on a nice warm day like this, the adders take a fancy to lie out in the middle of those paths and you can tread on ’em easy. If you find yourself about to step on one, and can’t stop yourself, then try to tread on the head. Tail can’t harm you but the fangs give you a nasty bite.’

After this daunting advice we carried on in silence and reasonable comfort, seeing nothing but the occasional grazing pony. We met no other traffic than a gaily painted gypsy caravan drawn by a piebald horse, with barefoot children running behind it. The sight of their merry, impudent faces made me laugh and brought a smile to Lefebre’s features. We exchanged glances and briefly grinned at one another, as two people sharing a joke, but what the joke might be, I wasn’t sure.

Lefebre unexpectedly called out to me above the rattle of the trap, ‘Freedom, do we ever know it again, once childhood is left behind? What do you say, Miss Martin?’

‘Not all children enjoy freedom as they ought. The lucky ones do, I suppose,’ was my reply.