The Dark Clue (56 page)

The cabman must have heard my sobs, and observed my efforts to stem my tears.

‘Something the matter, miss?' he said.

I shook my head, and turned to climb back into the hansom.

‘Take me to Twickenham,' I managed to say.

He stared at me. I took out my purse and shook it like a rattle.

‘That weren't what I were thinking, miss,' he said finally; and resumed his place.

And so we followed the thread again: edging our way along the north side of the park – only a stone's throw from the house where Mr. Kingsett had insulted me, and was doubtless still torturing his wife – and into Hammersmith, where Turner had once lived, and where the roads were now clogged with people trudging home to their one holiday of the year, and knots of excited children stood before the brilliantly lit fruiterers, gawping at their displays of oranges and apples and bowls of gold and silver fish, spilling out on to the pavement. And thence through Chiswick to Brentford, and past Amelia Bennett's house (it was quite dark, which startled me, until I remembered that her husband's health required them to spend the winters by the sea); and at length to Twickenham.

I told the driver to stop before Sandycombe Lodge. I looked at the dolls'-house door, and the dolls'-house windows – one of them bright with gaslight; and the plain white dolls'-house walls, and the dark bushes pressing upon them from every side. And I thought of what I could not see: the basement where Walter's madness had begun; its barred window, which had recalled to me
The Bay of Baiae,
and led me (I still believe) to the recesses of Turner's mind; and my stumbling discovery of my own love.

The pain of it took everything from me: speech, tears, movement. And yet as I sat there paralysed, I realized there was worse still to be faced, if I were to follow the trail all the way to the Minotaur. Like a child that can put its finger anywhere but the place that truly hurts, I had gone round the problem without touching its heart.

And in that moment I thought I knew where I should find Walter.

We came back along the river and through Chelsea – past Mrs. Booth's cottage (dear God! had I really supposed that Walter was too delicate to be told of Turner's life there?) and so home. As I paid him, the cabman nodded towards my mourning dress and said:

‘I couldn't help noticing, miss. I'm sorry. I lost my own girl a few month back.'

On a sudden impulse, I said:

‘Are you working tomorrow?'

He shook his head.

‘Got to ‘ave dinner, miss, with the missus and the young ‘uns. I promised ‘em that.'

‘Of course,' I said. ‘But after that?'

‘Well,' he said uncertainly. ‘I suppose I could come out for a bit.'

‘Would you call for me here? As early as you are able?'

‘Very good, miss.' He turned, and then looked back. ‘A Merry Christmas to you.'

I managed to slip in without the Davidsons seeing me; but they must have heard me, for a few minutes later there was a knock on my door.

‘Do you require anything, miss?'

‘No, thank you, Mrs. Davidson.'

A pause. Then:

‘Is there any news of Mr. Hartright, miss?'

Her voice was tight, choked with the anxieties she dared not put into words.

‘Not yet,' I said. ‘But I hope I may have some tomorrow.'

Please God I may.

Monday

I have a photograph of him, taken a year ago. From the openness of the expression, you'd suppose it was a different man. But the features are still recognizable.

I wrapped it in a shawl, to take with me. Then, while I waited, I looked through yesterday's
Times
. Two bodies found in the river. I raced through the descriptions: a pregnant woman, and an old man dressed as a seaman. A relief, of course. And yet I
could not help feeling something akin to disappointment, too. Death is at least final. It spares you the need to trouble yourself further.

At last, at four, there was a knock at the door. I went outside. It was already dark, and a heavy fog was hanging in the street. The driver peered at me in the lamplight, and grinned.

“Ow do, miss,' he said, in a mock-pompous voice, touching his cap. ‘Compliments of the season.'

I could not laugh. I could not even smile. ‘Was it a good dinner?' I said.

He nodded and patted his stomach. ‘Very satisfactory, thank you.' He gave a burlesque bow, and gestured towards the cab. ‘Where to now, miss?'

I could smell the beer on his breath.

‘Maiden Lane.'

The pawnbroker's shop was closed, but a tired-looking woman was just going in by the side-door. I called to her, and showed her the picture.

‘Have you seen this man?'

She narrowed her eyes. After a moment she nodded.

‘Yesterday. Early. I think it was the same feller. I remembers ‘im, on account of ‘im bein' so, well, queer.'

‘Why, what did he do?'

‘I don't mean ‘is manner. ‘E were a gentleman, there's no denyin' that. But that's what's so funny about it. ‘E says: “I wants a new suit o' clothes, cheap as you got.” An' ‘e takes a worn velveteen tog, and an old shirt, and a pair of kerseymere kicksies.'

‘Perhaps he had no money?'

‘I don't think that's it. You should ‘a' seen the stuff ‘e was wearin' when ‘e come in.
Very
serious. Must ‘a' cost' – she shook her head – ‘I don't know what.'

‘Did he leave it here?' I said.

She nodded.

‘A shilling if you'll show it to me.'

She unlocked the door.

There was no question. Walter's hat. Walter's suit. Walter's shirt, with one of the buttons missing where he had torn it off in his frenzy.

I paid her, and turned back to the cabman.

‘New Gravel Lane, Wapping,' I said.

It was a relentless journey, taking us by slow degrees from the power and splendour of the Strand to a world of such abject squalor and despair that even Maiden Lane seemed prosperous and hopeful beside it.

And with every yard I became more convinced that it was the journey Walter had taken.

For what he had done to me was an act of despair.

As we made our way down Fleet Street and Cannon Street and Eastcheap, and past the Tower, and into the teeming rat-cage beyond, I could hear his voice in my head:

That is where I thought I had met my fate.

Nothing will do but to go back there, and meet my fate again, and abandon myself to it.

I should find him there, I knew that now.

But whether living or dead, I could not guess.

After perhaps forty minutes we suddenly stopped. I looked out of the window, but could see nothing but fog and the blur of distant lights.

‘Where are we?' I said.

‘Ratcliffe ‘Ighway. The New Gravel's just over there.' He cleared his hoarse throat. ‘What is it you want there, miss?'

‘I'm looking for my brother.'

He whistled softly. “E must've done something bad.'

‘Yes,' I said, getting out. ‘Find somewhere you can rest the horse, and have some refreshment yourself.' I gave him a sovereign, thinking that if some accident befell me I might not have another chance to pay him. ‘And meet me here again in an hour.'

‘You can't go there alone, miss!' he protested.

But he took the money anyway. And when he called after me, it was not to urge me to think again, or to offer his assistance, but merely to say:

‘Thank you, miss!'

What had I imagined?

Murky, ill-lit streets, half deserted. For today, of all days, surely,
anyone who had a family and a home must have returned to them, leaving none but the wretched dregs among whom I thought to discover Walter.

But the desolation I found was of another sort. The people of New Gravel Lane were wretched indeed – but rather than shrinking into the shadows to suffer their misery in isolation, they seemed to have gathered in a great throng to proclaim it in public. I could hear their hubbub even before I could clearly see them: shouts and cries; snatches of song; the squeals of a tormented cat; a bullish roar that erupted suddenly out of the mist and then subsided in uneasy laughter. The beer-houses and taverns were open, and a constant stream of drunken men and women spilled out of them, and staggered bellicosely into the jeering crowd, as loudly and heedlessly as if this were just another raucous Saturday night. Save that some of the shops were closed, in fact, and that the merrymaking had a kind of heightened, feverish, desperate edge to it, there was nothing to suggest that it was Christmas Day at all.

Perhaps this is how they keep Christmas in Hell.

I had feared that I should be conspicuous; but no-one paid me the slightest heed as I entered the press. My first difficulty, indeed, I soon saw, would be to attract anyone's attention for long enough to ask a question; for everyone seemed entirely occupied with bawling and singing and swaggering his own way to ruin. A dizzying procession of faces – sunken and bloated, pale and drink-reddened, scabbed and scarred – propelled themselves towards me out of the fog, and were gone again in an instant. Even had I succeeded in stopping one of them for a moment, the swell of people would have parted us before I had had time to explain my purpose.

At length, I saw a dim forest of masts and spars looming through the mist, and realized I must be nearing the river. The crowd here was slightly less dense, and I saw a knot of capless and bonnetless women talking together at the mouth of the Thames tunnel, like crows waiting for carrion. One of them turned and looked idly towards me as I approached. I raised a hand to detain her.

‘I am looking for a man,' I said.

‘Ain't we all of us, darlin'?' she said.

The others laughed, and I felt myself blushing behind my veil.

‘Here is a picture of him,' I said, unwrapping the photograph.

The woman took it, tilted it to catch the light from the street-lamp, and let out a long whistling sigh.

‘I'd be lookin' for ‘im, if I ‘ad one like that,' she said. She smiled ruefully – and seemed in that moment to age twenty years, for I suddenly saw that she had no teeth.

‘Let's cool ‘im, Lizzie,' said one of her companions, moving to her side. She stared at the photograph for a moment, and then glanced oddly at me.

‘You sure you lost ‘im ‘ere?'

‘Yes.'

‘Well, I ain't seed ‘im. I'd ‘a' remembered if I ‘ad.'

The others gathered round, and the picture was slowly passed from hand to hand. Most of the women merely shook their heads; but one – a squat, dark-haired sloven in a torn dress – held on to it for so long, and looked at it so intently, that Lizzie at last burst out:

‘What is it, Lu? ‘E the one promised to marry yer?'

Lu! Was not that the name …?

‘Which
one?' cried one of the others: and they all laughed.

But Lu continued staring at the photograph, and I at her. She
might
have been the woman in the hood, I thought; but the light was so poor, and my mind had suppressed the details of Walter's description so successfully, that I could not be even reasonably sure. I craned forward, trying to make out her features.

‘Watch out, Lu, she'll ‘ave yer ears off!' Lizzie called out, half jokingly. For a moment I was puzzled; and then – with a shock that made me giddy – I understood: she supposed that I saw Lu as a rival, and was about to fling myself on her in a jealous rage. I tried to dismiss the idea as entirely ludicrous, and found to my horror that I could not do so – for the last few months have broken down the impenetrable wall that I had always supposed separated me from such women. Of course, my relations with Walter were of a different order; and yet had we not both known him in the same bestial, illicit way? And did that not intimately connect us, and give us – at the basest level – a similar claim upon him?

‘Give it back, please,' I said coldly, holding out my hand with as much authority as I could muster.

But she glared at me instead, and folded the picture to her breast.

‘Come on, Lu,' said Lizzie. ‘Give it ‘er. She ain't got nothing else.'

Lu still made no response; but at that moment fate intervened, for there was a sudden cry of ‘Stop! Thief!' and a second later a boy burst in among us, darting between boots and skirts as he looked frantically over his shoulder. I glimpsed a mat of dirty hair – a pinched face, entirely white save for a great purple sore on one cheek – and then a pair of worn soles as he disappeared into the tunnel.

Lizzie took advantage of the commotion to snatch the picture and thrust it into my hands.

‘There you are, darlin',' she muttered hurriedly. ‘Off you go, smartish. And good luck to you.'

I did not hesitate, but set off immediately back the way I had come. Behind me, I heard Lu swearing and protesting; but before she could give chase a Jew in a black coat sped past in pursuit of the boy, scattering the women again like startled chickens, and allowing me to make my escape.

I have only vague and disconnected recollections of my adventures during the next half an hour. A black sailor in a fur cap who shook his head sorrowfully as he looked at the picture, and said: ‘I have no money' – as if he had supposed I was trying to sell it to him, and would have liked to buy it if he could. Three tars who refused to looked at it at all, and jostled me aside, with oaths and yelps of derision. A little girl, who said she was sure her aunt knew the gentleman; and then led me to a bare room above a shoe-shop, where the air was thick with some sickly sweetness, and a lascar dozed on the floor, and a woman rocked back and forth on her heels, so stupefied that she could not focus her eyes on the photograph, or answer my questions.

At length I was forced to admit that I was wasting my time, and found my way back to Ratcliffe Highway. Whether I had been gone more or less than an hour I could not say; but the cab was waiting. The driver was squinting anxiously into the fog, and seemed relieved when he saw me.