The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (17 page)

A gust of wind overturned one of the ferns, and she stooped to right it. It was an ungainly little maidenhair which reminded her of Lettice. That made her feel worse.

‘Course,’ said Ben, ‘soon as he knows who you really are, he’ll run a mile.’

She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear and straightened up. ‘He won’t find out,’ she said, ‘unless I tell him.’

Ben opened his mouth, then shut it again. ‘Bugger me. You’re not going to tell him.’

She did not reply.

‘Madlin, don’t be daft. You’d be play-acting for the rest of your life.’

‘And Sophie would stand a chance of growing up.’

‘You’d never bring it off.’

‘I might.’

‘Lying every day? To a sodding parson?’

He was right. What was she thinking of? To deceive an innocent young churchman into wedding the bastard offshoot of his own adoptive family? It was unthinkable. Unconscionable.

But she
was
unconscionable. She knew that already. She had posed for those photographs, hadn’t she? What was the difference between that and marrying for money? In the end it all came down to the same thing. Two dogs mating in the gutter. The rest was lies.

Ben got to his feet and put a grimy hand on the railing. ‘You’ll never do it. You won’t. Will you?’ For a moment he looked very young, and it occurred to her that if she went through with it he would be alone again, with no-one but Robbie.

She said, ‘He’s given me until the day after tomorrow to decide—’

‘
Given? Given?
Listen to yourself, girl! If you marry him it’ll be like that for ever!’

‘My God, I do know that!’ she burst out. ‘But if I don’t, what happens to Sophie?’

They stood glaring at one another, while the wind overturned another fern and rolled it across the tiles.

Ben jammed on his cap. ‘I got to go,’ he muttered.

‘Come back tomorrow. I need you to help me decide.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Promise.’

He shrugged. ‘See what I can do.’

When he’d gone, she went into the kitchen and sat down at the table and pressed her hands to her mouth. She longed for Lettice. Not the mute, beseeching invalid of the final hours, but the grim, godly, utterly dependable little martinet who had brought her up.

‘Where’s Ben?’ asked Sophie, when Madeleine took in her milk jelly.

‘He had to go. But he’s coming back tomorrow.’ She cleared a space on the bed and sat down. The counterpane was littered with apple cores, the
Gentlewoman’s Magazine
, and
The Children of the New Forest
– the ban on reading having lasted exactly three days. Pablo Grey lay across it, wearing Lettice’s old mourning locket on a ribbon round his neck.

On the final night of Lettice’s life, Sophie had been allowed into the sickroom to say goodbye. She had asked if Lettice was afraid of dying, and Lettice, too ill to speak, had shaken her head. In case that wasn’t quite true, Sophie had left the donkey with her for support.

Had that final act of grace been enough to redeem a life lived without love?

Madeleine felt the sting of tears. Why was everything so mixed up?

Sophie licked her spoon. ‘Maddy, are you all right?’

Madeleine shook her head. She longed to tell her sister everything. But she had always protected her from the facts about their parents: it was the one thing on which she and Lettice had agreed.

If she married the Reverend Lawe, that pretence would increase tenfold.
If
she married him.

She found herself hoping fiercely that Ben would come tomorrow. She needed his sharpness, and his flat-on view of the world, to help her decide.

It’s three in the morning and Ben’s just woken up, and for a bit he don’t remember nothing, and everything’s fine. Then it all comes back in a rush and he wants to die.

He’s stiff from sleeping behind the chimney stack, and he’s all hollowed out like he’s made of glass; like he’d shatter if you touched him. If only he could do that, just shatter and not be there any more, just be dead.

He grinds his knuckles in his eyes, but he can’t stop seeing it. Over and over, all the little details.

It was yesterday – only yesterday? Day after he had that row with Madeleine down in the basement. Him and Robbie are round the Garden, clicking a bit of breakfast: couple of greengages, Robbie loves them – and now they’re heading off to Madeleine’s, just like he said he would.

So they’ve just cut across Hanway Place when Ben sees Constable Hatch standing on the pavement. He’s got his hands on his hips and he’s looking about slowly, like he means business. Then he spots Robbie –
Robbie
– and he blows his whistle and shouts, ‘Stop thief!’ And Robbie’s going, ‘What? What?’ and Ben’s thinking, Christ, this is the only time we
ain’t
done a bloody click.

So off they go, him and Robbie, up the alley without a word between them. Not a word. Not then, not after. He thinks about that a lot.

So they’re up the drainpipes and over the roofs, and Ben’s not a bit worried. It’s one of his best routes; Hatch hasn’t got a chance.

But Hatch won’t leave off. He’s tracking them on the ground, and he’s got two other bluebottles with him, and that’s never happened before. And Ben thinks, whatever it was I clicked, it must of been big.

It’s tricky on them roofs, and he steps on a loose tile and nearly goes over, shit that was close, and it’s all of forty feet down. He calls to Robbie to watch that tile, and there’s no answer, so he looks over his shoulder, and Robbie’s not there. Stupid little bugger must of taken a wrong turn. He’s always doing that. So Ben goes back for him, but he can’t find him nowhere. Then he looks over the edge and sees this little crowd on the pavement – and he still don’t understand; it’s like he’s stupid or something. Then Hatch pushes back the crowd, and that’s when Ben sees what’s on the ground.

He has to shove his fist in his mouth to keep from yelling out. It’s like he’s a bird swooping down, he sees it so close and sharp. Robbie’s on his back, all twisted like a doll. Dog sticking out of his pocket. Pool of blood round his head. It must be blood, but it’s nearly black, and there’s these greasy grey splashes all round about.

Robbie’s eyes are open, and he’s staring up at Ben.
You should of sung out sooner about that tile, Ben. Why didn’t you sing out sooner?

Constable Hatch is looking up at the roof to see where Robbie fell, so Ben edges back. He don’t know how long he stays there, fist still in his mouth, but when he looks again, Robbie’s gone. Crowd’s gone too, and so is Constable Hatch. And someone’s sluiced down the pavement, and a costermonger’s set up his barrow there, flogging cabbages past their best at a farthing a piece.

All day long Ben stays on the roof, and when it’s dark he goes back to Shelton Street. He shouldn’t go back, cos Hatch will be watching the streets. But he’s got to see it one last time.

On the bed there’s Robbie’s place, all hollowed out in the straw. And that’s when Ben nearly cracks. He’s got to get out of there fast.

So he’s up on the roof again and this time he heads off east. He keeps going for hours, he just keeps going. And down below he hears the crowds on the doss, shuffling along: nowhere to go, coppers flashing lanterns in their eyes, move along now, no malingering. And he thinks, that’s you now, Ben, you’re on the doss. Can’t get any lower than that unless you’re dead.

By now he’s come so far east that he don’t know the roofs, and all the best spots are already taken. But at last he finds an empty one behind a chimney stack. Soon as he curls up, he feels it rising up inside him: clawing at his gullet, fighting to get out. He shoves it down again, right down deep where it can’t get out, till it’s just this ache in his chest that he’ll never let loose.

He did that when Ma died, and Lily, and Ryan and Kate. And now he’s doing it with Robbie. And Robbie’s the last of them.

You’ll never go through this again, Ben Kelly, he tells hisself. You can’t, can you? Cos there’s nobody left.

He don’t remember falling asleep, but the moon wakes him up and it’s three o’clock by the church bells, and he’s looking down into this stinking little yard with a water butt and a coalshed and a hut. It reminds him of back home in Shelton Street, and his throat goes all tight.

He can’t go on without Robbie. He wants to die.

But you can’t, says this voice inside his head. If you top yourself now, who’s going to find out where they took Robbie, and make sure he don’t get shoved in a pauper’s grave without Dog? You got to fix that, Ben. And after that we’ll see.

Then he thinks, hang about, there’s more. It was that parson as put the coppers onto you. You got to fix him too.

Soon as he thinks it, he knows it’s true. He can see just how it went. There’s this nobby young parson in his big nobby house in Fitzroy Square, and everything’s going along nice and sweet. So one day he asks Madeleine to marry him, and he thinks she’ll just fall at his feet. But what’s she do? She says she wants time to consider. Nasty shock, that. Nasty. So the parson gets to thinking, and he thinks, ay ay, maybe them two lads I seen in the churchyard been putting ideas in her head. I seen them before, outside my house, and I didn’t like the look of them, and I don’t now. So I think I’ll do for them, I will.

And being a nob, it’s easy to fix it with the bluebottles, and that.

The only thing Ben can’t understand is why the parson put Hatch onto Robbie instead of him. Cos that’s what happened, he’s sure of it. When Hatch blew that whistle and shouted Stop thief, he was looking at Robbie.

But why? Robbie never done nothing to the parson. Robbie never done nothing to nobody. He wouldn’t know how.

Ben’s eyes are hot again, and he stabs them with his knuckles. Shut it, Ben. Just shut it. You know what you got to do.

First you got to find Robbie and get him settled with Dog. Then you got to see about the parson.

At nine o’clock on Saturday morning, a knock at the door announced the Reverend’s manservant, come to collect Madeleine’s answer.

She didn’t have one. She had fallen asleep fully dressed, and dreamed she was at her wedding. Ben was waiting to give her away, and she was walking up the aisle in her underclothes, and everyone was pointing.

Blearily she told the Reverend’s man to wait in the kitchen, and went upstairs to the morning-room – where, among Lettice’s few remaining possessions, there was a fountain pen and a sheaf of writing paper.

There was still no sign of Ben. She had waited the whole of the previous day, but he had never arrived. Perhaps he was in some sort of trouble. Perhaps he had given up on her.

It was an overcast October day, and the morning-room was dark when she went in. With the furniture gone, there was nowhere to sit but the window seat, where she had placed Lettice’s Bible, her prayer book and her writing-case.

She set up the writing-case on her lap and took out Lettice’s fountain pen and a sheet of paper.
Dear Mr Lawe,
she wrote.

She put down the pen. Yes or no? She still didn’t know. She didn’t
know
.

If she said no, she would be back where she started: wondering where to find the rent, with winter looming and Sophie getting worse by the day. If she said yes, her money worries were over.

And that’s what it comes down to, she told herself. Money. It’s got nothing to do with deceiving the Reverend. It’s got nothing to do with that family in Jamaica that doesn’t want you. It’s all about money.

In a strange way that made her feel a little better. But she still didn’t know what to do.

She picked up the Bible. How many times during her childhood had she longed for it to go missing, so that she wouldn’t have to sit through another interminable reading? Well, now let it do its job. Let God decide. She shut her eyes, opened it at random, and put her finger on a verse.

And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee and thou shalt glorify me.

That was so apt it was frightening. She tried again.

And the sons of Helah were Zereth, and Jezoar, and Ethnan
.

She willed the words to mean something. They did not.

Down in the kitchen, the Reverend’s manservant gave a polite, admonitory cough. The Reverend had stressed his desire for a prompt response.

One last try.

This shall be the law of the leper in the day of his cleansing: He shall be brought unto the priest.

She pushed the Bible away as if it were alive.

Outside, the clouds parted. Sunlight blazed through Lettice’s stained-glass window. Madeleine glanced at the ruby parrots skimming the emerald jungle beside the sapphire sea. She hated that window just as fervently as Sophie adored it. Sophie called it ‘the Jamaica window’: she was always giving the parrots names, and trying to find out which exact species they belonged to in
Birds of the World
.

But to Madeleine that window simply meant the family that didn’t want them. And the officer who had left her in the snow.

Another cough from the kitchen, this time slightly less polite.

She picked up Lettice’s prayer book. Please God, she thought, what should I do?

A letter slipped from between the pages and fell to the parquet at her feet.

It was old, and had been unfolded and refolded so many times that it only just hung together at the edges. The handwriting was large, sprawling, and hard to read, but the signature was clear.
Cameron Lawe
.

Madeleine felt a coldness in the pit of her stomach. She had once asked the Reverend if he had any siblings. ‘Only a brother,’ he had said with a tightening of the lips. ‘It pains me to speak of him. For I am a man of God, but Cameron is a man of violence. He has always been coarse and intemperate, so perhaps it should have come as no surprise when he was discharged from the Service – for a crime too shameful to repeat.’ Madeleine had pictured a gambler and a rake: the sort of black sheep who could make a clergyman blanch.

And here was that same Cameron Lawe writing to
Lettice
. Lettice, whom his own brother didn’t know.