Paying Guests (46 page)

‘But what about Colvilles for baking and such-like cooking?’ Duff interrupted. ‘They are excellent.’

‘They’re good enough,’ Mrs Milstead allowed, ‘if a shade tart for my fancy. For eating, as I was saying –’

‘Codlings and Summer Pearmains,’ said Duff. ‘Good summer apples, they are. But for the autumn I prefer Dontons and small Russets. And of course, there’s the sweet little Beauties of Bath –’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Milstead and sank back into silence, but now Duff was well away and Tilly relaxed, grateful to see him animated for the first time since his return from Leicestershire a few days ago.

When it was time to bid them farewell, collecting Polly from the barn where she had clearly spent a reasonably contented time with her brothers and was leaving in a much better frame of mind than she had after their last visit, Mr Milstead shook Tilly by the hand firmly and bade her take his good wishes back to the committee at St George’s Hospital.

‘For I tell you, Ma’am, they got the best idea about dealing with young beggary. None of us is about to take care of the full-grown beggars, for we have enough indigents of our own and the Poor Law rates enough to cripple a hard-working man like myself, comfortable though I may be, but these children are not past redemption and I’ll gladly take more when I can. I works ‘em, I don’t deny, but you can see for yourself they’re happy enough, and well fed into the bargain.’

Indeed they did look well, and were grinning happily enough at their master, and not showing undue fear of him, though undoubted deference.

‘If they’d stayed in the city, why, all they’d do is drive their betters to distraction with their pestering and then go crawling into places where they got no right to be and doing all sorts of damage. Why, I heard only last week of a house over Covent Garden way where the owner was away abroad and he comes back and found no less than seven of ‘em bedded down in his chambers! That’ll never do, will it, Ma’am? So you tell the committee that they can send me their children – boys only, mind – girls makes trouble, if you’ll forgive me saying so.’ And he cast a sharp look at Polly who stared
back at him mulishly. ‘And are better off in service to a good mistress like yourself to watch over them. But boys I’ll take any time and glad to. Good day to you, Ma’am, and I thank you for your visit and wish you well.’

‘Are the boys happy, Polly?’ Tilly asked her in the brake that carried them back to the railway station at the end of the afternoon, through the darkening countryside where the ground was developing the silvery sheen of frost under their eyes as the wheels clattered over the frozen ruts of the road. ‘They look well enough, but they may have spoken more to you?’

‘Oh, they like it very well,’ Polly said. ‘They has to work and very hard at that, but don’t we all? I works too –’ She looked at Tilly from beneath lowered lids, a glance she caught even in the dim light of the swinging lantern fastened to the front of the brake as the horse trotted on its swaying way.

‘Work never hurt anyone,’ Tilly said, a little uneasily. Was she making this child work too hard in the house? She must talk to Eliza about that, for in truth she could not really know.

‘I knows that and so do the boys. They ain’t complaining. It’s just the way he goes on about beggars all the time that frets ‘em, they says. It’s like we was born to be different, when all we was, my brother says – Tom, the one that got under your wheel that day, Missus – he says we was just unlucky. Our pa was as caring a man as any he’s met here, he says, only he was unlucky, so when the master goes on about beggars and the wicked things they do ‘e’s fair to ‘it ‘im. Not that ’e would, because that’d prove to old Milstead ’e was right in what ’e says, and Tom won’t ‘ave that –’ She too lapsed into silence and stared out into the blackness of the Kentish night, at the way frosted stars were caught in the naked branches of trees and small rustlings in the hedges showed where frightened animals had been put up by the sound of the wheels.

Tilly said no more about it, either, but was very aware of Polly’s uneasiness. That she was happy to see her brothers well was clear, but she was still fretful, and Tilly wondered why. And then put it down to the girl’s natural tendency to be argumentative, and since they were on the train and on their way back to Victoria by now,
allowed herself to doze off with her head against the dusty cloth of the carriage rather than to make conversation.

Duff saw them all into a four-wheeler cab at Victoria and Georgie woke for a while and wailed, but Polly shushed him back into quietness and they all sat in the rather bemused state tiredness created – for it was now well past eleven o’clock and they had left Quentin’s at eight in the morning – thinking longingly of their beds.

Until the cab reached the end of Brompton Road and took the great curve that brought them within sight of their own front door. Tilly, who had started to doze again, was roused by an unusual light or sound; she could not be sure which it was, and then realized it was a smell that had dragged her back to the here and now. She had been dreaming she was in the kitchen so early that no one had set and lit the fire; and that Eliza was crying aloud in distress at that fact as she set a flame to the paper beneath the sticks. The smell of the new fire filled her nostrils agreeably and she tried to tell Eliza not to worry so, it did not matter she was late, they would manage well enough. But Eliza went on shouting, louder and louder; and then Tilly was awake and staring about her in alarm, her heart racing.

Duff had his head out of the window of the cab, staring ahead into the darkness, and the noise Tilly had heard in her sleep changed and became not one woman’s dream voice but the cries of several, and she sat bolt upright, just as Polly too woke and stared about her.

‘Duff, what is it?’ Tilly cried and tried to push him aside so that she could see out, but he wouldn’t let her. He was calling to the cab driver who had pulled hard on his reins.

‘Driver, get that horse going, will you? That house – it is close to ours – we must get there as fast as we can!’ Duff cried but the cabbie shouted something unintelligible back at him and Duff opened the door and jumped out, swearing. Tilly was taken aback; she had never heard him speak so before.

He reappeared a moment later at the window. ‘Mamma, I don’t know what’s happening but it seems the horse will go no further
according to this dolt of a driver. He says it’s afraid of fire – I shall run ahead and see what’s afoot. You remain here safe and I shall return for you.’

‘No!’ she cried. ‘A fire? Oh, Duff, not Quentin’s? Tell me it’s not –’

‘I don’t know,’ he cried, for now the noise of shouting had increased and there was a roaring sound and Tilly thought, That’s burning, I can hear burning, and pushed against the door, still held by Duff, to get out.

‘I’m coming with you!’ she cried. ‘Polly, stay here.’ And not waiting to see that she was obeyed, took her skirts in both hands and began to run after Duff, who was haring along in front of her. And as she ran she saw it as well as heard it and smelled it. The sky was a glorious golden and crimson ahead of her, and she was certain, absolutely certain, that it was her beloved Quentin’s that was creating that glow.

THE NOISE WAS dreadful as people shouted and the roar of wooden beams and brick walls being consumed by the leaping flames rose higher and higher. The light was lurid, and as Tilly arrived, breathing so hard that her chest felt constricted and her lower teeth ached, her eyes began to sting with the acrid smoke.

On the far side of the road, staring up at the great fire, was a knot of people and she recognized several of her neighbours, some of them in their dressing-gowns and night caps, and then her chest tightened again, for in one cluster of people were her own guests. She could see Mr Grayling holding his wife hard by the shoulders as, her head tied up in a turban, she stared up open-mouthed at all that was going on, and the Misses K and F, with Miss Barnetsen shrinking between them, standing august and severe and almost daring the fireman, who was trying to urge the unlookers to go further away, to move
them
on any pretext. Silas was there too, and she ran across the road towards him, past the snaking leather hoses that stretched from the fire-engine that stood to one side of her own front door.

‘Silas!’ she cried, and her voice was thick, for she had inhaled some of the smoke that was billowing along the street. ‘What happened? Is anyone hurt? Is everyone here? The maids – where is Eliza? And the –’

‘It’s all right.’ Silas took her elbows and held them tight, and bawled in her ear because of the hubbub that was increasing now as a second fire-engine, drawn by four very excited, stamping horses,
came thundering along the street. ‘It’s not Quentin’s – it’s all right –’

She clung to him for a moment and then pulled back. ‘Is everyone out?’ she shouted again. ‘Have you made sure that everyone is all right?’

‘I told you it isn’t our house – it’s next door. The empty one. There’s no need to be worried at all. The guests came out only because the fireman said we should, for safety’s sake in case it spreads, but he is doing all he can to prevent it – Oh!’

He stared over her shoulder as the newly arrived engine stopped, spewing out a cluster of brawny men in the uniform of the London Fire Engine Establishment, who pulled their hoses away from the equipage to seek a water hydrant. The light gleamed on the brass and leather helmets and coats, and made them look like emissaries from hell; and they were very fast.

So fast that by the time Tilly was aware of what it was that had alarmed Silas, it was too late to stop it. The man in charge of the second engine, an excitable fellow with a great deal of showiness in his behaviour and a most stentorian voice, had shouted to his men some unintelligible instruction and they had turned their hoses on the front of Quentin’s, even though Tilly could now see by squinting through the smoke and shifting light that it was indeed the adjoining house that was the seat of the fire. Dorcas’s house.

Quite why the power of the water was so strong she did not know. There had been much rain lately and perhaps the wells and the reservoirs were full. Perhaps the pump on the fire-engine was particularly strong and efficient. Whatever the cause, the first hose snaked, leaped in its custodians’ hands and then straightened its kinks rapidly as the water filled it and burst out of the nozzle at a rate so swift that when it hit the drawing-room windows of Quentin’s, at which it was pointing, the impact was so powerful that the glass shattered.

Tilly screamed, Silas shouted and several of the guests set up a noise to match, and Tilly turned to try to plunge across the road to stop the firemen with the hose.

‘Oh, no!’ she was crying. ‘There is no fire in my house – it’s the other house – no –’ But Silas seized her arm and held her back.

‘They have to, my dear,’ he cried. ‘It is essential to make the adjoining properties wet in order to stop the fire from spreading – see? They’re doing it on the other side too.’

She turned her head and through eyes streaming with a mixture of irritation caused by the smoke and tears of distress, saw that a third engine had now arrived and was, indeed, dousing the adjoining house, as the first engine went on struggling with Dorcas’s house. And then she flinched and sprang back to stand close to Silas as with a great roar the upper part of the front of Dorcas’s house collapsed in a great shower of sparks and leaping flames which in any other circumstances would have been regarded as positively beautiful.

A sort of sigh went up from the onlookers, a faint hissing sound as if they had all drawn a breath through their teeth at the same moment in sympathy with the house’s pain, as though it had been a sentient thing, and Tilly looked over her shoulder at them, at the upturned faces lit to a vivid orange by the greedy clamour of those high bounding flames and felt her own face crumple.

Silas held her close then and she was glad of it, burying her face in his coat and holding on tight. He started to speak to someone over her head, but still she paid no attention. All she could do was cling to him as the thought pounded and throbbed in her head.

Eliza did this. Eliza did this. Eliza –

It took several hours finally to douse the fire in Dorcas Oliver’s house. It was still dark when the firemen at last hauled in their hoses and made their weary way back to their equipages, but there was that lightening in the air that spoke of a new dawn approaching. The people who had been watching had vanished one by one, the residents of the street whose houses had, to their good fortune, not been affected by more than the stench of smoke to go gratefully to bed, and the others to make what shift they could in the dreadful state their houses had been left in by the licking of the flames
alongside and the floods of water that the firemen had poured into the houses to save their fabric.

Tilly sat curled up in her kitchen, her feet tucked up beneath her, with Eliza sitting on the stool beside the grate. The fire in the range had been allowed to go down, and now Eliza began painstakingly to find dry coal in among the wet pieces in the scuttle to start it up again. The floor was awash with an inch or more of filthy water, for it had flooded down the area steps and in through the kitchen door and windows which, like the upper ones, had been shattered by the force of the firemen’s over-eager hoses. It slapped about the table legs and the chairs like an ill-tempered tide on a sluggish sea; the gay rag rug with its brave colours looked bedraggled and muted as it half floated, half sank in a corner of the room and the smell everywhere was disgusting.