Little Bones (20 page)

The doctor was pacing the hall. ‘What shall we do? My wife won’t budge half an inch.’

‘I could push her, sir. She could hold onto my arm.’

‘Hold onto you? Have you seen the size of her? One false step and she’d crush you.’

‘We could move very slowly,’ said Jane. ‘Or we could go and fetch a cab?’

The doctor told Jane that his wife would not entertain the notion of a cab. She had never liked cabmen after an incident with a cab driver many years ago. ‘Let’s just say he was presumptuous and rude,’ said the doctor.

‘I can hear you,’ said Mrs Swift. ‘And you are only making it worse.’

‘We need to take positive action,’ he said, slamming the door behind them.

‘Did you have to do that?’ she said.

‘Oh for heaven’s sake! Most people close their front doors when they are leaving the house,’ he snapped. ‘It only stands to reason.’

Jane could feel Mrs Swift shaking through her coat sleeves. The sky was dark. There was a definite chill in the air. ‘We’ll go together,’ said Jane. ‘One step at a time. And while we are stepping, perhaps you should think of something else. Something that will help to calm your nerves.’

‘Like what?’ she said, sliding a boot a little closer to the gate as if the ground was an ice rink.

‘Like Brighton, ma’am. You could picture the promenade. The friendliness of the people.’

Mrs Swift grunted. It took almost fifteen minutes to get beyond the gatepost. When a man appeared, walking his dog, she took three steps back. ‘If we are very lucky,’ said the doctor, ‘we might reach Brighton by this time next year.’

Stopping and starting, moving at a snail’s pace, the doctor on one side of his wife, Jane on the other, they passed Jeremiah Beam, who tipped his hat towards them. ‘Fine night for it,’ he said.

‘It most certainly is,’ said the doctor.

Mrs Swift stopped. ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ she whispered to her husband, as Jeremiah slipped inside a doorway.

‘Nothing at all. He was merely being pleasant.’

When the oysterman appeared, Mrs Swift froze, only melting when he had vanished. The freezing and melting continued when a lamplighter bid them good evening, a pair of lovebirds nodded in their direction, and an old ragged woman stood and cackled over an empty bottle of gin. ‘Good God,’ said Mrs Swift. ‘The outside world is full of filthy witchy beasts.’

‘Just think of the seaside, ma’am,’ said Jane. ‘Think of all that lovely poached salmon.’

‘I don’t know,’ Mrs Swift whimpered. ‘Do you think they will remember us?’

‘Remember us?’ said the doctor, narrowing his eyes at the moon. ‘How could they forget?’

Ten minutes later, when a somewhat noisy crowd emerged from the Grapes public house, Mrs Swift
collapsed
into a heap. The doctor pulled her arms. Jane felt like kicking her.

‘No,’ she wept. ‘I won’t go on. I can’t.’

It took them an hour to drag her back into the house, her head dropping onto her chest, the doctor accusing her of melodrama, a thing he couldn’t abide. The house was dark and cold. A draft was blowing down the chimney. It scattered all the ashes from the grate.

Exhausted, Jane felt her way into the kitchen, lighting a lamp, watching the shadows jump across the ceiling as the flame took hold. When she brought the teapot, Mrs Swift was already ensconced in her armchair, panting as though she had run from one end of London to the other. The doctor waved the teacup away. He drank what was left of the whisky, mumbling about the return of the luggage and the tickets gone to waste.

‘I have let you down,’ said Mrs Swift. ‘My courage simply failed me.’

‘Things will look better in the morning, ma’am.’

‘They will?’ said the doctor. ‘And in three weeks’ time, what then?’

‘It is all my fault. It seems I can’t do anything,’ said his wife, pouring sugar into her teacup.

‘Perhaps I should have carried a hot meat pie, and you could have followed the scent of the gravy?’

It was no great surprise when Mrs Swift started bawling.

‘Things might change,’ said Jane, stroking the back of her hand. ‘You might find your courage. I have heard of mesmerists swinging a fob watch, convincing people to do all sorts of strange and fanciful things. One man in the music hall thought he was a parrot.’

‘Perhaps we could mesmerise the sergeant?’ said the doctor, as he stamped outside the room. ‘Perhaps he will look at the watch and believe I trained as a surgeon at Guy’s. Or perhaps he will say “Pretty Polly”.’

The days held nothing but tension. Mrs Swift had put on her coat at least a dozen times, she had pulled on her gloves, scarf, but she could not put one foot across the doorstep. The doctor had recovered their luggage, with a small fee to pay. To add to her misery, Mrs Swift’s shepherdess had not fared well and had lost her right arm from the shoulder.

Edie and Alice had arrived early on Monday morning. The house was still sleeping and they thought it was empty. When they had read the note, they threw it aside, taking all the groceries they could carry between them, before posting the key through the letterbox.

‘Thieves!’ said Mrs Swift, looking at the shelves once bulging with pots of jam and tins of rolled ox tongue. ‘Those girls are nothing but thieves!’

They lived in a close, tight world. When Mrs Swift had a craving for one of Mr Cahill’s chicken pies, or the milk had run out, Jane hurried to the shops and back. She wanted to visit Axford Square, where Nell must be out of her mind. She wanted to see Ned. Just for five minutes. ‘On no account,’ said the doctor. ‘We are in Scotland. Remember?’

A week passed. Jane tried to keep on top of things. She swept the grates and lit fires. She emptied the
night
pots and cut squares of paper for the lavatory. She cooked what she could find, though the doctor had no appetite, only picking at his plate.

‘Are you going to eat that rissole?’ asked Mrs Swift.

The doctor pushed his plate towards her. ‘Oh, you have it, go on, we can’t have you fading away.’

Jane ate by herself in the kitchen and was glad of the peace, though the room was crumbling around her. The sink was piled high with dirty crockery and a pan that had burnt through the bottom. The floor was patterned with peelings, grease and breadcrumbs. The air was rancid. Stinking. From the pantry, Jane could hear the mice, presumably gorging on porridge oats, dried fruit, and what little remained of the sugar.

On Monday morning, there was yet more news of Mr Treble. Jane, on her way to buy butter, had seen it on the news-stands and quickly bought the latest edition.

‘Jane,’ said Mrs Swift, ‘you read it out. I think the words would choke me.’

‘“Treble’s death, incon, incon …”’

The doctor snatched up the paper. ‘“Treble’s death inconclusive,”’ he read.

‘Sounds promising,’ said his wife.

The doctor read that the cause of Mr Treble’s death was likely to remain a mystery, his early demise being one of those unexplained occurrences when the heart simply stops beating, and life cannot be sustained.

‘No traces of poison, injury, or foul play have been found, though Police Sergeant Richard Morrell of Bow Street would like to question a woman named Brown, with regards to her personal welfare.’

‘There was no mention of our name,’ said Mrs Swift. ‘And for that I am both grateful and relieved.’

‘Grateful?’ said the doctor. ‘Relieved? Don’t delude yourself, woman! This isn’t over yet!’

That night, Jane heard the Swifts’ bedroom door bang so hard the floorboards shook long after the doctor went stamping down the stairs. Jane closed her eyes. In her head a hundred doors were slamming. Her father had disappeared again. Her mother had gone outside to find him. And then Agnes. When had she last seen her sister? What had she said to have driven her so far away?

Jane thought back to their last night together. They had walked to the confectioner’s and bought a small bag of pastilles. They had looked in the milliner’s shop window.
Too expensive. Too old-maidish. Too silly
. In the room they had talked about funny things. The woman on Exeter Street who was dressed like a man. The snake-charmer whose snake they were sure was made from papier mâché. They hadn’t bickered or sulked. So why had Agnes left her with only a note?

The letter was standing on the mantelshelf. It had been addressed ‘To Margaret’. Jane knocked on the Swifts’ bedroom door, and when Mrs Swift called her inside she could not believe the mess of it; the room was in total disarray, clothes hanging from the bedstead, the pictures crooked or smashed.

‘Oh my goodness, ma’am,’ said Jane. ‘What happened?’

Mrs Swift pulled herself higher on the pillows and rubbed her swollen eyes. ‘My husband. Last night. Did you not hear the commotion? He became quite demented.’

Jane held out the envelope. ‘I found this,’ she said.

Mrs Swift looked ashen as she reached out and grabbed it; tearing it open, she quickly started reading.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Jane.

‘Here. Read the blasted letter for yourself.’

Dear Margaret
,

I cannot live like this. I need some time alone. I need to think. I don’t know how long I will be gone, but when I have a solid plan I will return to you
.

Please do not worry regarding my whereabouts. It is best if you know nothing. I have taken a little of the money. The rest is in the usual place. I have enough to tide me over
.

Do nothing rash, I implore you
.

Until we meet again
,

Your devoted husband
,

F
.

An hour of weeping followed, though when Jane brought up her lunch (a hard-boiled egg, a limp sprig of watercress and four cream crackers), Mrs Swift suddenly became quite stoical. ‘When he does return with his plan,’ she said, blowing her nose, ‘our lives will be better. It will be like before.’

‘But ma’am,’ said Jane. ‘What about the sergeant? He needs to see the certificates.’

Mrs Swift sighed, she picked a piece of watercress and waved it in the air. ‘My husband might be back by then,’ she said, throwing the cress between her lips. ‘And if not, we will say he has abandoned me. Men abandon women all the time.’

Jane was not convinced. She spent her days worrying. If a policeman walked past the house, she very nearly fainted. Her nights were sleepless. With her eyes closed she could feel the bed tilting. She was flying from the cold black rooftop, passing Axford Square, the dome of St Paul’s and Westminster. Swooping lower, she could see the faces in the street. A soldier. A ragman. A small frail girl was carrying an open musical box, and when she turned a silver key, the ballerina inside started dancing.

‘Don’t you miss the outside world?’ asked Jane. Mrs Swift was leaning on her elbows, looking out of the window for her husband, but now admiring a small Pekinese and a woman in a black sable coat.

‘What is there to miss?’

Jane looked surprised, because even from this window, the two circles wiped clean from the dust like portholes, Jane could see a dozen things she would not like to lose. The girl with the basket of flowers propped against the corner. The shop selling cream-filled pastries. Even the horses with their wet rolling eyes. ‘Life?’ Jane ventured. ‘Friends?’

‘In our current situation friends are few and far between. Anyway, we left all that in Brighton. We thought it for the best.’

‘But, ma’am,’ insisted Jane, ‘things will work out, and you can make new friends anywhere. There are meeting places for ladies like yourself. Lecture halls. Church groups and societies.’

Mrs Swift snorted. ‘We are hiding from the law!’

Trailing a fingertip over the mantelshelf, Mrs Swift
told
Jane that Londoners were not the friendliest of people, and the kind of work the doctor did –
good work
, but nevertheless the sort of work you cannot take into society without the fear of being exposed – had removed her from everything.

‘Never mind the police,’ she said. ‘I have been hiding here for years.’ And for a few long seconds she examined her coal-stained fingertip before wiping it over her skirt. ‘I did try,’ she went on, tugging at the string of lacklustre beads sitting at her throat. ‘In the early days I would go to meetings. I would take tea and biscuits with the ladies from those nice little houses near the Charing Cross Road, nibbling their thin tasteless wafers like well-trained mice. I would go to lectures about paintings and poetry. The plight of the missionaries in Africa and Samoa. But then the voice would start to drone, the heat would get to me, and I could feel those narrow eyes piercing the back of my head. I was glad when the doors opened and we were allowed to disperse. It is easier, I find, not to bother.’

‘We could take a little walk around the yard,’ suggested Jane, and though it seemed Mrs Swift might be thinking about going upstairs and rifling through that gigantic tub of a wardrobe to find a coat to fit her expanded indoor frame, or better still a shawl, she soon began to shiver, plumping up the cushions and reaching for a blanket.

‘I have an affliction,’ she said. ‘As you have seen, I am not suited to a life outside these walls. Unlike my husband. I wonder where on earth he has got to? Is he still in London? I wonder if anything else has fallen into his hands?’

‘Yes,’ said Jane, thinking of the teacup, and what a strange and lucky happening that was. Where had that cup come from? Had a lady taking tea felt a sudden repugnance for the pattern, or the pale bitter liquid inside it? Was it aimed at a cruel suitor’s forehead, and, missing its target, went sailing through a window, only to land unscathed in the doctor’s open hands? And what about the paperweight? Who would want to lose such a pretty object? Jane thought about her own paltry findings. The broken peacock feather. A few torn pages from a comic book.

‘That paperweight could have killed him,’ said Mrs Swift. ‘Apart from anything, the sky is a dangerous thing.’

‘Jane!’ Mrs Swift was yelling. ‘Oh Jane! Could I have a little bite to eat? Some cold cuts and mustard? Jane! I said mustard! Jane? Can you hear me?’

Jane sliced bologna. She found a few stale crackers and a small soft tomato. The cheddar cheese was acceptable. The mustard needed mixing. She found a bottle of hock.