The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (59 page)

Thinking on that gives him that hot, prickly tightness in his chest. He snarls and grinds his knuckles into his eyes.

So don’t think about it, you daft bugger. Don’t think about Sophie or Madeleine, or any of it. Just walk away. Walk away and slam the lid down hard.

Chapter Five

The thing about Ben Kelly was that he’d never lied to her.

He’d been scornful and harsh, and once he’d nearly made her cry. But he’d never lied. ‘What’s the bloody point?’ he’d have said if she’d asked. ‘If you can’t take the truth, that’s your lookout.’

The first time they met was in London in 1894, at the photography studio in the Portland Road where Maddy did a little ladylike helping out. Early one foggy March morning she took Sophie along with her for a tenth-birthday treat, and they stumbled upon two unbelievably filthy urchins looking for something to steal.

Neither Sophie nor Madeleine had ever met an urchin before. So instead of shooing them out of the studio or summoning a policeman, Maddy grabbed a wooden rifle from the props shelf and cried, ‘Stop, thief!’, with what Sophie thought was incredible presence of mind. And as neither boy could tell a real gun from a fake, they froze like cornered animals.

‘What have you got in your pockets?’ snapped Maddy, trying to look fierce.

With grim obedience the urchins emptied their pockets, and several rotten apples and a pear thudded wetly onto the counter.

The girls were astonished. Every week Mr Rennard, the studio proprietor, bought a bowl of fruit in case any of his sitters needed livening up with what he called ‘a bit of background’. But this week he hadn’t got round to replacing it.

‘What were you going to do with those?’ said Maddy, voicing the question in Sophie’s mind.

‘Eat them,’ snapped the older boy, as if she’d said something idiotic. ‘Wha’d’ya think?’

‘But they’re rotten,’ said Maddy. ‘We were going to throw them away.’

‘Shows how much you know,’ he muttered.

Sophie was captivated. She’d never met anyone like him. In fact, she hadn’t met too many people at all, because Cousin Lettice didn’t allow them to mix with company. And of course the Poor were doubly out of bounds, since they lacked moral fibre and harboured disease.

He said his name was Ben Kelly, and his brother’s name was Robbie, and he spat out his answers in a voice sharp with scorn, for he knew that he’d seen more of the world than they.

Sophie caught her breath and tried not to stare. He was grey with dirt and he smelt like a sewer rat, but for her that only heightened his glamour. He was like an imp from another world; like some kind of exotic and perilous birthday present.

His brother Robbie was a hunchback, with matted orange hair and a dull but trusting little face. One scabby bare foot was clumsily bandaged with a scrap of newspaper, so he had to stand on one leg as he stared open-mouthed at Maddy, dribbling bits of half-chewed apple down his front.

Ben was tall and thin, and beneath the ground-in dirt his face had a sharp-boned purity which reminded Sophie of an effigy in a church. Then she noticed his eyes, and felt a faint, cold settling of awe. She’d never seen anyone with green eyes. She decided that he must be a changeling, with a lineage tracing back to a race of mer-men, or possibly King Arthur.

She could tell that he was older than her, but to her amazement he didn’t know
how
old, and he didn’t seem to care. ‘I dunno,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Thirteen? What’s it to you?’

But what does he do about birthdays? she wondered.

She felt sorry for Robbie, but she never felt sorry for Ben. Right from the start she just wanted to be his friend.

So to get his attention, she plucked up her courage and decided to show him her new book. ‘It was my birthday last week,’ she said, speaking quickly, as she always did when she was nervous. ‘I didn’t have a party, as we don’t really know anyone. That’s why it’s so nice to meet you—’

‘Sophie—’ muttered Maddy with an admonitory glance.

‘– but Maddy gave me
Black Beauty
,’ she went on, throwing her sister a beseeching look, ‘and it’s absolutely
brilliant
, I’ve read it twice already.’ She put it on the counter and pushed it over to where he could see it.

He glanced at the calfskin binding. Then his eyes returned for a closer look. She felt a thrill of triumph as she watched him put out one grimy forefinger and trace the gilded curve of the horse’s neck. Then he glanced up and caught her watching him, and his face closed. ‘They got the bridle wrong,’ he snapped.

She was impressed. ‘Do you know about horses?’

‘Ben had this job once,’ said Robbie, talking in a sing-song voice as if he’d learnt it by heart. ‘It was at Berner’s Mews, and he—’

‘Shut it,’ snarled his brother. Then to Sophie, ‘So you can read. So what?’

She blinked. ‘But – everyone can read.’

Then she noticed that Maddy was shaking her head and giving her that lopsided grin which meant
Oh, Sophie, really!
and she suddenly perceived her mistake. She was appalled. She herself spent every available moment buried in a book; it was her favourite thing. It had never occurred to her that there might be people who couldn’t read.

But what must that be like, she wondered. If you couldn’t ever get into a book, you’d be shut out. The whole world would be grey. Surely, surely it wasn’t like that for him? ‘I’m most awfully sorry,’ she said earnestly. ‘I didn’t mean – um – can’t you read?’

‘I know my letters,’ he snapped.

It was the closest that he ever got to telling her a lie. She found out later that he’d only gone to school once, for a couple of weeks, when they were giving out soup tickets. And because he was clever, he’d picked up most of the letters, although he hadn’t yet learned how to string them together into words.

At the time, though, she didn’t know any of that. She was still grappling with the notion of not being able to read. Then she had her idea. ‘Maddy keeps a few books for the clients’ children,’ she said, running to the drawer behind the counter and giving her sister a questioning look.

Maddy nodded, hefting the gun on her hip.

‘It’s to keep them amused,’ Sophie went on breathlessly. She glanced at him over her shoulder, and met his narrow unsmiling gaze, and turned back to the drawer in confusion. ‘I thought you might care to have one,’ she went on, ‘and then you’ll be able to read too. It’s about a cavalry horse in the Crimean War. I thought you might enjoy it, as you like horses.’

She thought he’d be pleased, or perhaps even a little grateful. Instead he glanced from her to the picture-book with scowling incomprehension. His face worked as if she’d flung him a deadly insult. ‘Not going to read it, am I?’ he snarled as he snatched it from her hand. ‘Going to sell it, that’s what.’

She thought she must have misunderstood. She tried to smile, and told him that when he’d finished this book, he could come back and she’d give him another. But to her horror, that only made things worse. ‘You cracked or what? Why would I come back?’

By this time she was blinking back tears. I will
not
cry, she told herself fiercely. I jolly well will
not
.

Luckily that was when Maddy stepped in and glared at him, and he backed down, and Sophie’s self-respect was saved. A moment later he muttered, ‘Come on, Robbie, time we was off,’ and shortly afterwards they left.

Sophie stood at the door swallowing tears as she watched them disappear into the bitter yellow fog. She didn’t understand what she’d done wrong.

It was only later that she realized that he simply hadn’t known how else to react. He was like a dog who has experienced nothing but beatings, and can only snarl when someone offers it a bone.

She thought that she would never see him again, but a few months later he came back.

It was just after Cousin Lettice’s husband had died and left them bankrupt. Madeleine had explained that bankrupt meant extremely poor – at least, it meant poor by Cousin Lettice’s standards, for they had to dismiss Cook and Susan, and have their clothes dyed black, instead of simply buying new ones from the Mourning Department at Peter Robinson’s. But it didn’t mean poor like Ben and Robbie. Even Sophie understood that.

It was a hot, sticky day in August. Cousin Lettice had taken a sleeping powder and gone to lie down, and Sophie and Madeleine were in the kitchen making lunch. Sophie was sitting on the table swinging her legs, and Madeleine was stirring the soup and reading aloud from Mrs Beeton in a funny voice. Suddenly the basement door opened, and there they were.

Sophie’s heart swelled painfully. ‘Maddy,
look
! It’s Ben and Robbie!’

It turned out that Ben had heard about Cousin Septimus ‘popping his clogs and going all to smash’, and found out where they lived by ‘asking around’, and just dropped by ‘to see what was what’.

Maddy darted him a cool look and told him to shut the door, so it fell to Sophie to make them welcome. ‘Can I show them the morning-room?’ she begged her sister. Then, to Ben, ‘There’s a stained-glass window which Maddy detests but I think is absolutely stupendous, like in a church.’ He threw her his wary, shut-in look, and she realized with a sinking feeling that she was talking too much. Again.

Maddy vetoed the idea of the morning-room on the grounds that they’d only steal things. Sophie thought that shockingly rude, but Ben didn’t seem to mind at all. In fact, he shot Maddy a sharp, feral grin and said with approval, ‘Now you’re learning.’

After that he and Maddy fell to talking about bankruptcy, while Sophie chatted self-consciously to Robbie, and wondered what she had to do to get Ben to grin at
her
like that. She was determined that this time she wouldn’t offend him. There was to be no repeat of the picture-book fiasco.

So when Maddy asked her to lay the table, she didn’t even look at him as she went to the dresser and fetched four of everything and set it on the table. Yes, he could have some soup if he wanted – but it was entirely up to him, and nobody would say a word about it either way. She reflected that it was a bit like trying to lure a squirrel with a trail of bread, and that made her feel more hopeful, because she’d always been rather good at that.

Maddy poured out four bowls of soup and set them on the table, but when she, Robbie and Sophie sat down, Ben remained edgily by the door.

To avoid any awkwardness, Sophie kept up a flow of chatter, while observing him out of the corner of her eye. To begin with he watched them eating, but then he gave himself a little shake, and started gazing about him at the pots and the china on the dresser. He didn’t look bitter or envious. He just looked at it all with a flat-on acceptance, as if he understood that what Madeleine called ‘poor’ bore no relation to himself.

Ten minutes later he was still leaning against the door, so Sophie decided to take matters into her own hands. ‘Look, Ben,’ she said, ‘I’ve got a bruise. I fell down the steps and banged my knee.’

‘Sophie . . .’ mumbled Madeleine through a mouthful of soup.

Sophie ignored her. Greatly daring, she twisted round in her chair and peeled back her stocking to show him.

He snorted. ‘That’s no bruise.’

‘Yes it jolly well is,’ she snapped, ‘and it hurts, too.’

She was furious with herself for flaring up, but to her astonishment he merely gave a harsh bark of laughter. Then he sidled over and sat down, and worked his way with frowning concentration through three bowls of soup.

She felt a glow of triumph. She only had a vague idea of how she had achieved it, but she’d got him to the table, and that was the important thing.

They talked a little about their respective parents, and established that both sets of fathers and mothers were dead. Well, that’s a point in common, thought Sophie happily.

Then Robbie lifted his head from his bowl long enough to recite one of his by-rote narratives. ‘Ma had red hair like me, but Pa’s was black like Ben’s, and Pa knocked her about so she died. Then Ben took me away and Pa died too and Ben said good riddance. Ma used to send us hop-picking, that’s why Ben’s so strong, but I had to stop home on account of I was too little. And we had
two whole rooms
in East Street and a separate bed for the kids, and every Sunday Ben had to fetch the dinner from the bakehouse, brisket and batter pudding and spuds.’

Sophie was fascinated. Only two rooms? And from the sound of it, they hadn’t had a kitchen of their own. No wonder he’d stared at theirs.

She wanted to ask questions, but Ben cuffed Robbie around the head and told him to belt up, and Robbie grinned and did as he was told. That fascinated her, too. Ben was like a sheepdog with his brother: making him do what he wanted and snapping at him if he didn’t, but also fiercely protective.

Maddy was a little like that with her, although without the cuffing. So when they finished the soup and Maddy told Sophie to take Robbie out and show him the garden, she didn’t hesitate, although she desperately wanted to stay behind with Ben.

How was she to know that Maddy was going to mess things up, and give him the book,
The Downfall of the Dervishes
, which Sophie herself had picked out weeks ago and bought with her own personal money, in case he ever came back?

She was outside with Robbie, showing him Cousin Lettice’s potted ferns, when they heard Ben yelling angrily for his brother. ‘Here, Rob, look sharp! We’re off!’

Robbie jammed on his cap and scuttled down the stairs, and by the time Sophie reached the kitchen they were both on their way out – Ben with a face like thunder, and
The Downfall of the Dervishes
tucked under his arm.

Sophie was incandescent. ‘
I
was going to give it to him!’ she shouted at her sister when they’d gone. ‘
I
bought it, it was
my
present!’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Maddy, ‘I forgot.’

‘What did you
say
to him to make him go off like that?’

‘Nothing,’ said Maddy unconvincingly. ‘We were just talking about how to make money. And – things like that.’ She didn’t elaborate, but Sophie could tell that there was more. At times, Maddy could be infuriatingly secretive.