Under the Poppy (8 page)

And I found us Lucy, I’m proud to say, just picked her out right on the street. She’s a very likely girl, Lucy, always pulls fair and never has a bad word to say about anyone, except for Miss Decca, and who can blame her there? It’s Puggy’s belief that Miss Decca’s jealous, she sees our Lucy’s got some talent for the stage, more than a little, more than the other girls for sure—hear her sing, she’s got a very true voice—and that’s why Miss Decca’s so dead-set against her. Puggy says Miss Decca wants to tread the boards herself, but that’s just Puggy talking nonsense. Miss Decca could no more perform than she could fly.

No, she’s Rupert’s left hand, and I’m his good strong right, and us three together are the heart of the Poppy, or I guess we were, until this Istvan’s come. But that’s the way of it, right? I don’t believe he’ll stay, he doesn’t look the staying type, but he’s brought a new kind of life to us for sure. Not that we were asking for it! But that’s the way of things as well. And those puppets are well worth having, I’d like to learn to work a few of them myself. Make that Pan Loudermilk jig, eh? Not bloody likely. He looks like he’d bite off your fingers if you tried.

“The girls are mostly hale,” says Dr. Adderley to Rupert. They sit together in the parlor-office, the doctor enjoying a morning glass of whiskey while Rupert goes over the bill.

“ Mostly?”

“It’s that Jennie.” Dr. Adderley rubs his eye, the one without the little golden monocle; he privately believes that a monocle gives him more stature as a physician. Adderley is generally assumed not to be his true name, he is a mulatto from somewhere he cares not to mention, and his doctoring degree is perhaps self-conferred. But he is skillful and thorough, the whores’ conditions have improved under his care, all but recidivist Jennie: “Her arm’s going to drop off, Mr. Bok, she’s got to get away from that needle. I’ve advised Miss Decca about it, and Omar, too, to put him on the watch.”

“Miss Decca’s not much of a nurse,” says Rupert dryly. “And Omar’s got his troubles, too, in that department.”

“Oh, he’s healed up nicely, very nicely.
He
knows to stay away from the needle.” Adderley swallows the last of the whiskey. “Now, that Laddie’s got to have a few days off.” Rupert raises his eyebrows. “Well, he can suck, or, or whatever, that’s fine. But I had to do a bit of stitching, and he’ll need to rest that area for a bit.”

Rupert nods, folds some bills into an envelope, raises the whiskey bottle—“Another?”—but Dr. Adderley shakes his head in thanks, takes the envelope, and departs, monocle a-shine. Rupert heads for the whores’ hallway, knocks on the door next to Lucy’s Blue Room, where Laddie reclines, up on one elbow and “Adderley was in to see me,” Rupert says, closing the door.

“Yes,” says Laddie glumly, “me, too.” His English is accented still, a faint chuffing aftertaste of Berlin, perhaps, or Moscow, his name is Russian though no one ever calls him Vladimir. A lean, dark, slightly mournful boy, yet not at all girlish, one would never mistake him that way. Though by certain lights, in certain lights, he might be taken for a man somewhat older, a man resembling, say, Rupert, or someone very like him, if he cut his hair, or tucked it into a collar or cap. “I’m hurting some, Mister Rupert, I am.”

“I know you are. Why don’t you take the evening off? Tomorrow, too, if it pains you still. Just stay in your room and rest, or watch the show, whichever. I’ll tell Miss Decca.”

Laddie’s smile is pleased and surprised. “Why, many thanks, Mister Rupert. You’re good to me.”

Rupert shrugs, looking not at Laddie but at the door, the floor; is he thinking, perhaps, of that resemblance, of the heat it rouses, the pain it might cause? but “Just rest,” he says again, hand on the doorknob when his glance is caught by something bright, gold and gleaming black: a black pearl, a stickpin stuck between the coverlet and the slats, it is in his hand and
Take it
, he wants to say to Laddie, still smiling on the bed,
take it, break it, sell the pieces
but of course nothing this fine, this distinctive, could be fenced with any safety in this town. Instead he slips it into his pocket and goes to Decca, pince-nez and scowling over the books, and “Give Laddie a little something extra,” he says. “And a day or two off the floor.”

“Extra? Why? Are we paying them not to work, now?” but “Do it,” he says, not loud, not unkindly, but her lips tighten and she nods. From Decca’s room he enters his own, to extract the stickpin from his pocket and lock it in another of his desk drawers, another narrow chamber bound by the steel key on his watch chain. Then he frees and retrieves the little white knife, and holds it in his hand, his curling fingers, as if it is a key of a different sort, an amazement to remind him just how wretched one can be.

The children sit together, boy and girl on a low wall in the mist of earliest morning. The foxface boy holds the puppet on his knee, a fantastical concoction of wire and scavenged wood, coarse black string for hair, nutshells painted blue for eyes that it, he, Marco, rolls just like a real boy’s, if you pull a certain thread at the back of his neck.

Last night he made five dollars,
the boy says.
Dancing for the ladies and gents
.

The ragged girl leans closer, the better to see. Her aching fingers are jammed into the pockets of her skirts; she has no gloves. Around her neck is a cord of plaited “silver,” gilt-paper woven cleverly into a chain: her brother made it for her, draped it on her like a coronation.
Can I make him dance?

No, Ag. He’s not a toy, yeah? He won’t do it for anyone but me.

The girl sighs, but does not protest. She has learned that protesting does no good, that the thing to do is bear down and wait. Wait until he changes his mind, if he changes his mind. Wait out the whippings from Mrs. Segunda, wait for the day to turn to dusk, wait by the window for this brother, half-brother, son of the same mother who sleeps now with the holy angels, who, like an angel himself, always appears from the darkness, bringing hope, however short-lived.

At the asylum the windows are bolted at sundown, Mrs. Segunda is most insistent about robbers who slip through open windows to steal the silver and threaten the householders’ lives. Agatha has been punished many times for undoing those bolts, letting in the night air itself a hazard, and who can guess what other dangers as well? The milky vicar sadly importunes his wife:
The poor child is striped from neck to knees. Can you not reach her by some other means, my love?
but
Naught else will serve,
insists Mrs. Segunda,
this one is nigh incorrigible
and in this, unlike most other matters, she is correct and the vicar is not. Privately she considers her husband too soft to deal effectively with children. Observe the dry unwinking stare of the girl Agatha, with her pockets full of candy floss and flimsy-dolls, paper chain about her neck, where did she come by such trifles? She will not say. She is disciplined, to bring an answer to her lips; still she will not say. Very well, if she refuses to open her mouth for the truth, she shall have no food, either, as the spirit is superior to the flesh.

Thus Mrs. Segunda toils tirelessly in the care of these unwanted girls, who like wayward vines will grow crooked, wicked, unless they are trained strictly, and with strict resolve. They come from no proper family or parentage—such as this Agatha, self-deposited one cold morning at the turn, waiting stiff and silent for the morning doors to open—and, without aid, destined to starve, or perish in the work-houses, or descend even lower to theft and prostitution, producing more orphans while still children themselves. It is a dreadful life for the girls on the streets, and Mrs. Segunda obeys with vigor her Christian duty to rescue them from lasting harm. She has had some success—one of her girls is in service in the household of the Lord Mayor himself—and thanks Providence for the chance to be of continuing aid.

Vicar Segunda has a different method with the children, gentle smiles and sweet hymn singing, dandling them as if they were his own, tickling them until they weep from laughter; all but Agatha. “Sad Agatha” he calls her, taking it as a failing that he cannot make her smile as he does the others.
Why do you grieve, child?

Why does she grieve? Does she grieve? or only swallow grief as she swallows her hunger, her loneliness, her resolve to wait for her brother to free her if it takes the world’s end to bring about. He has promised, many times, nearly every time he comes, to take her away someday, away from the hymns and the whippings, the sewing lessons stitching shrouds for pauper babies, the everlasting slops and chores. For now it is only a precious few hours at a time, running beside him while he roams with his dark twin, silent Rupert whom he calls “Mouse” (though only he can call him so, once she watched another boy attempt it as a jape and get beaten toothless for the try). Together they dash and scatter, stealing, larking, watching the city from a thousand hidey-holes, depositing her at the window or the gate to await the next time: when? She is never sure. She can only wait.

Rupert the Mouse loves her brother, she can see that, but in a way very different from her own worship; some of it may have to do with bumming, the way the boys do with one another, but there is more to it than that. It is a kind of love that sleeps with one eye open, brooding over the chosen other, the kind that wraps around like a cloak in the storm, that finds fierce little knives made from magic that can never, ever be lost or left behind…. And her brother loves Rupert, too. Much more than he loves her, or their mother who died calling his name; even more than his puppet Marco that he made with his own hands and carries everywhere he lodges, sleeping in a special box. No, this love is a kind of need for Rupert, a requirement: he must have Rupert to be happy. What would that be like, to be so needed by someone else, to be essential? She has no words for these ideas, cannot even frame the question; all she can do is keep close to their love, the way one hugs the grate in the cold, whatever is extra seeping outward to where she bides. She can make do with very little, with almost nothing; it is both her strength and her doom.

Now she reaches to touch the puppet’s blouse, brown velvet soft as kitten’s fur.
Did Rupert watch him dance, too?

Her brother gives a fond nod.
He sang “Paddy’s Lament,” and “Lady Angela Takes the Air,” and whacked a masher’s knee when he got too disputatious. Funny.
He makes Marco’s eyes roll.
Funny, yeah, Marco?

The puppet gives a little shake, as if in remembered mirth. His paper boots, painted to look like leather, kick against Istvan’s lap, as though he might start up jigging directly. To Agatha he seems a mean little boy, the kind of boy who tries to snatch up her skirts in the streets, the kind she hits and pinches as she longs to hit and pinch this doll, this dummy, this creature beloved of her brother, whisked off by him and singing Rupert to dance for mashers and curry coins and travel the wide world while she herself is left bereft at the asylum door. Pinch him, yes, she would like to pinch him, pitch him head first into the kitchen stove, velvet shirt, nutshell eyes and all. He is all dry wood, he would make a jolly fire.

She smiles to herself; Istvan smiles, too.
I might make a lady for him,
he says
musingly
. To dance with. Think you can get me some of that pink muslin, again?

She can and she does, the very next midnight, absconding the entire rag-bag, muslin, shroud-scraps and all, is tumbling it over the sill when she is unhappily surprised by the vigilant Mrs. Segunda, whose caught glimpse from the window of the waiting gang—three boys, though one is apparently a cripple—convinces her that Agatha’s vice-raddled soul merits sterner corrective measures than even she can provide:
I have done all that Christian love may warrant,
she tells her sad husband, as Agatha stands silently by, furious with herself for being caught, frightened white as Mrs. Segunda goes on to decree that
The girl must go directly to the lock-hospital,
a true gaol where there are bars on every door, and no outside windows at all. If she ever wept, Agatha, she would cry as her few possessions are gathered, as she is led to the warder’s wagon: how will her brother and Rupert ever find her, ever free her, now?

But from disaster comes sudden rude salvation: the warder’s driver is somewhat less concerned with Christian virtue than with having his thin prick diddled, and what is it to the yawning turnkey if eight girls arrive when nine were promised? Perhaps there was a mistake on the papers that at any rate neither of them can read. So a swift figure drops from the wagon and loses itself in the darkness, incorrigible Agatha who by the time the sun rises has chopped her braids with a fruit-seller’s paring knife and changed her name: she is Decca, now, a jigger and singer, for half a penny she will give you “Paddy’s Lament” and “Lady Angela Takes the Air.”