Park Lane (11 page)

The couples around them are dancing closer than she’d like and Mr Pointer’s body’s near against hers. Grace tries to draw back, but he’s holding her tight as a trap, and coming in close so that there’s hot beer in her ear. It feels as though there’s a barrel-band across her chest and her lungs are only moving a little now, panting she is, and Mr Pointer goes ‘Oh’ and moves closer. Lord knows what she’ll feel of him next. ‘Come on,’ he says, but the thick air, the bodies, Mr Pointer’s locked-stiff arms are all making her feel ill. The dance floor’s so crowded there’s not a chance of keeping your distance, not that anybody on it looks like they want to. You’d’ve thought someone would put an end to it, in public, but it’s too dark, isn’t it, for anyone to see if they don’t want to. It’s the new dances, too, pushing you towards each other every few steps.

Grace puts her heel on the toe of Mr Pointer’s boot. The edge, quite careful, so as all her weight’s on just that tiny bit, and he steps back. She smiles, mouths ‘Pardon’, then ‘Excuse me’. He nods to the bar, with ‘I’ll see you there’. Grace wriggles into the crowd fast as she can, knocking through the elbows, she’s fetched her coat in a flash, then out the door into the strange street. They came here in a taxicab and what bus, or where the stop is, she doesn’t want to spend the time looking for. A taxi draws up and a group of men fall out, with one lady screeching with laughter. Good Lord, Grace thinks, the extravagance, what she earns in … but Grace looks back over her shoulder and thinks she can see Mr Pointer coming out the door. It is him, and he’s walking towards her. Grace’s heart is pounding and she knocks on the taxi’s front window a flutter of times in a second, until the driver looks at her as if she’s half crazed. Park Lane, she says, and he raises his eyebrows. Then she’s on that empty seat quick as she can, grabbing the leather strap inside and pulling the door shut. Once she’s moving, she looks back at Mr Pointer and waves at him. At least he might tell Mary she’s gone, if Mary’ll notice anything.

The cab is shaking from side to side as though the ground’s rumbling underneath, and each time it comes up behind a horse Grace is thrown forward as the driver brakes. Once she’s back in her seat, her eyes are fixed on the taxi meter as it clicks higher and higher. This is her sending-home money and she’s trying to think what else she can do without. It’s a while before she knows where she is, then she’s by Victoria Station, that’s ten minutes’ walk, and she knows the way. Grace leans forward and asks the driver to stop. ‘Thought you said Park Lane,’ he grumbles. ‘Remembered where you really live?’

Sunday again. Michael takes Grace to the far side of the park. The damp chill of the last few weeks is fading and the freshness of the air begins to take her mind away from last night. Every minute she sat in church she was wondering if God forgives girls who encourage
men. It must have been her fault that Mr Pointer behaved liked that. Is that what London has done to her, and so quick? The thought comes to her that Joseph may be seeing that too and it makes her feel slightly ill, so she fixes her eyes on the building ahead, dark red brick and windows the size of small trees.

‘Looks like a palace, Michael.’

‘It is a palace.’

‘Who lives there?’

He doesn’t reply.

‘There must be dozens of them.’

‘Only dozens of servants, and thought little of. The rich keep their eyes shut and their hearts empty, Grace. They don’t give a damn about us. I’d do away with the lot of them.’

Grace jolts back with this, almost as if he’s been speaking about her, which he is, in a way. When you’re in service it feels as though what happens to the family you work for is happening to you, too. She thinks of Miss Beatrice, and Lady Masters; would Michael want to do away with them? Surely they care about Grace and the rest of them downstairs, what with the questions they ask. She feels a little hollow. No, she thinks, this mustn’t be true; she’s not going to let Michael make all that friendliness untrue. There’s enough bad thoughts she’s had this morning and she’s not having him take away the good ones she might have left.

‘No, Michael,’ she says. ‘I don’t think that’s fair.’

‘Turning your head, is it? Mayfair and all that money? You’ll be on their side, soon … If I had my way I’d never give them a civil word. Some day I won’t have to.’

‘No, Michael, it’s simply not fair to say all of them are like that.’

He grunts.

She continues. ‘Some of them have the money not to be,’ and as she smiles at this wry comment of hers, Michael laughs out loud.

‘But it’s true,’ he says, ‘you have to be able to afford to be kind. Remember that: what you can afford to do and what you can’t. Not just money either, Grace. Don’t give anything away lightly.’

They hover by the Round Pond, watching the miniature yachts trying to make their way across. A few feet from them a man so wide that he looks as if he would be better bouncing along rather than walking, struggles to lean over to launch his wooden boat.

‘He’s going to go,’ says Grace, ‘right over.’ And Michael laughs again. There it is: she knew the old Michael was there. Whatever she’s said to him, it’s working and, slowly, the wrongs of yesterday begin to right themselves.

‘They’re feeding you, sister.’

Grace blushes. She looks across at him. He’s drawn, not eating what she is. She’d thought of him when she saw the leftovers in the pantry were turning.

‘That’s not a thought even to have,’ Mary had said. ‘It’ll set Mrs Wainwright on your tail. She’ll say that Lady Masters can’t be feeding half of London.’

‘I thought she did?’

‘Did?’

‘The dockworkers. When they were on strike.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Oh, no one.’

‘Message from God?’

‘Joseph.’

‘Oh.’ Mary’s oh was long drawn out. She looked at Grace sideways. ‘That was before his time. Best not to know it.’

‘Got all you need, Grace? I worry about you.’ Really, Michael is on gentle form today, Grace is beginning to feel that this is her moment to tell him any one of those things burning inside her. She needs someone to tell her that nobody will think she really sent the card to Mr Bellows, that it is usual to feel funny after last night, that that is not why Joseph likes her, and how to find thirty shillings a month. He could do all these things, could Michael.

But instead she answers, ‘Yes, I have all I need.’

‘Sure of that, Grace?’ Michael can tell that all’s not as it should
be. Reassure him, Grace Campbell. She pulls her gloves higher up over her wrists.

‘I’m all right, Michael.’

Now he’s looking at her and catches her eye and makes her look back him and hold his gaze. He raises his eyebrows.

‘If you say so, Grace.’

It’s Grace’s turn to worry, at the tone of his voice. He knows she’s lying, she thinks.

‘What are you needing then, Michael?’

‘Grace, can you type something out for me?’

Her breath stops in her.

‘On the machines, Grace. At your office.’

Her reply comes quickly now, too quickly.

‘It’s not allowed, spending work time on a personal matter.’

‘You could go in early.’

What’s she to say to that? This is it, thinks Grace, I’ve told a lie and I’ll burn for it even before I’m in my grave. But something comes to her.

‘There’s the paper,’ she says, ‘and the ribbon to pay for.’

‘I’ll give you those,’ he says.

Grace sticks to it, she has to. No, not for personal use, she says, there was another girl, she’s been told, as took in her own ribbon and was given the sack on the spot. Out on her ear and not even that week’s pay. ‘It’s the rules, Michael.’

Michael doesn’t believe her, but Michael doesn’t believe in rules, or rather, he doesn’t like them. The corners of his mouth are down and his eyes are half closed, looking at her sideways. He thinks she’s shirking, she’s sure of it. He turns away and hangs his head.

‘I would have thought,’ he says, ‘that you would do this for me.’

At that moment she has a fear that it mightn’t take Michael finding out for Grace to lose him, and that there are other ways in which she can disappoint him. He may be her brother, but he’s all too ready to turn his back on a person and never talk to them again.

‘Oh, Michael. I’ll do anything I can for you. You know that. Just not
that
.’ What can she do, she thinks, what can I give my brother that he might need?

‘Can,’ he snorts, ‘can? If we only do what we “can” nothing in this cursed world will change.’

He is silent now.

‘What about where you work, Michael, in chambers?’

‘You can’t come in there.’

‘No, I mean you do the typing.’

He looks at her as though she’s simple.

‘I’m not a typist, Grace.’

She’s too flustered, though she’s hiding it, to ask him what needs typing, and she can’t now. Any case, she wants to talk about anything but typing. In a minute she may trip over her tongue.

Michael is continuing. ‘Besides, I have reading to do in order to know what to write. That’s if I can find the books.’

‘What books?’

Michael rattles out a few names. Philosophy, Grace, Michael tells her. Call it politics if you must, you should know about that. Grace knows about politics, she reads the
Daily Express
once the others have finished with it, and of course Miss Sand told them about the government. Why, a young woman like Grace, even if she is working as a maid at present, should be thinking about politics too, she tells herself.

Mrs Wainwright knows that Grace likes doing the library. Grace has told her she enjoys her elbow pushing into the wood and bringing the shine back up, that smell of polish everywhere. Grace spends as much time as she can there, breathing in old paper and leather. Today being a Monday she’s more time to enjoy it, for the family is still in the country and there are no bedroom fires to be lit.

It’s on the ground floor, tucked away in a corner and only the double doors tell you it’s a place to go into. They’re plain dark
wood, none of that white and gold of upstairs. Grace likes the plainness: it adds to the surprise when you walk inside.

There’s not much light from the side window. It’s lamps they use to make the room glow, all wood and leather book spines lining the walls. There’s enough of them in red and green to give it a feel of Christmas year round. This morning, as she’s standing and looking, polishing a spine or two, Joseph comes in and stands beside her. It’s just one man who collected all these, he tells her, the first Sir William Masters. He’s the man who built this house fifty years ago. He travelled all over the world. Grace could tell that herself of course from the titles when they’re in languages she doesn’t understand, and she tells Joseph this. Joseph tells her that Sir William couldn’t read them either, not a word that wasn’t English. They were for his wife. She could speak all the languages for him.

Then Joseph says, ‘Look, Grace, look what’s in here.’ He opens a cupboard and takes out a long leather tube. ‘See the paper inside, Grace? That’s plans for the railways he built before he became Sir William and built this house. He didn’t start off Sir William,’ Joseph says, ‘he was a builder; maybe I’ll become a builder, Grace.’ Joseph is standing right next to her, so as she can feel the heat from his body, and he reaches an arm out for a book but when it brushes past her shoulder, he pulls it back. Grace feels a flush rising through her collar and she holds herself in at the waist, her shoulders back, even though it makes her chest go forward, pushing it closer to him.

Joseph’s fixing his eyes straight ahead, poker-necked but full-lipped, and pretending not to look. Grace is sure he knows how close he is and it feels as though he is drawing her towards him, and she has an impulse to kiss him. Her body starts to move, and before she knows it her face is right by his; then, just as suddenly, a fear comes over her, and she sees her life going one way, rather than the other. She stops and holds her breath in, for it’s going tell-tale fast, and says, ‘I must get on.’

He gasps; at least she thinks it’s a gasp she hears. His mouth is half open and his eyes look as though he’s been pinched.

He is still for a moment, and looks at the far wall. Then, eyes to the floor, he says, ‘See you, Grace,’ as though it’s the last thing he wants to do. As the door clicks shut behind him it feels like it’s cut a piece of her in two.

Her impulses: Grace can control them but look what good that does her. She has an urge to swear out loud but Grace can’t swear, she’s had it so drummed into her that swearing is the beginning of the end, though what she’s about to do now is going to lead her straight there, in one leap. ‘Jesus Christ,’ she says, in not much more than a whisper but it’s out there nonetheless. Then Grace looks over her shoulder to check that nobody has slipped in behind her, double reason to check that.

The library steps are heavy – the trick is to roll them forward rather than try to swing them to the side. They’ve been left at the end by Z, at the window, giving the impression that someone has read their way through the lot. The wheels rumble on the floorboards, and Grace starts at the noise. What if Mrs Wainwright … But she should be moving them to sweep underneath. Though perhaps not so far all at once for there’s folding steps she can use to reach the books from, with the feather duster she’s left leaning against the side. She’d think of something though, she’s always been quick at that, and she’s grown quicker recently, had to, lips tight as they can be every Sunday. Now she’s stopping and starting, searching the letters. Fr, Fl, Fe … Grace likes the orderliness of the library, nothing unexpected can happen here. Fa … Ew, there was an E, wasn’t there, one of the books Michael told her the name of. E, there you are, Grace, ladder into the side and up she goes, clutching a dusting cloth in case anyone comes in, and searching the Es for a name that rings true.

As she climbs her head grows lighter and by the time she’s at the top she feels as though she is flying, not quite herself. She finds it up
there, the book she’s after. Engels, Friedrich.
The Condition of the Working Class in England
, that’s the one Michael said, and how can you forget a name like that?