Animating Maria (12 page)

Amy took off her hat and twisted it this way and that. Then she put it down and ran her large hands through her short cropped hair. ‘Oh, I am sure you are romancing again,’ she said.

‘No, I only weave stupid dreams for myself,’ said Maria. ‘You’ll see. Mr Haddon will send a note tomorrow or flowers or something. And you must forgive him, just as you will forgive Miss Effy.’

‘What an odd girl you are,’ said Amy. ‘Half child, half woman. Do you really mean to break your engagement to Berham?’

‘Yes. I shall do it tomorrow. As soon as he sneers at that rookery of his and makes one of his down-putting remarks, I shall tell him.’

‘Not much of a revenge,’ pointed out Amy. ‘He’ll probably just be glad to get rid of you.’

Again that strange fury shook Maria. How dare he want to be rid of her!

The morning was grey and overcast with a threat of rain. Great damp gusts of wind sent straw and paper flying about the streets. The duke helped Maria into his curricle. A small tiger was perched on the back, not a boy but a small wizened cockney.

The duke gave all his attention to his horses. Maria was silent, planning a splendid rejection.

They eventually turned off the Strand and bowled down narrow filthy streets until they came to John Street. The duke reined in his horses and his tiger ran to their heads. The duke got down and went around the carriage and helped Maria to alight. He stood in silence, his hands on his hips, his black eyes raking over the buildings on either side.

Then he shrugged. Maria saw that shrug and opened her mouth to begin her breaking-of-the-engagement speech.

But his next words surprised her. ‘I suppose it
is
mine. Well, goodness knows I found enough dilapidation on my country estates when I came into my inheritance. It will be more difficult, for there will be all manner of thieves’ nests to be rooted out. But I am sure some order can be brought to the place. I shall return with my agent tomorrow.’

Maria could hardly believe her ears. ‘I shall come with you,’ she said firmly.

His eyes lit up with mocking humour. ‘Meaning you do not believe me. As you will. I think the afternoon would be a more civilized time. You may be shocked at some of the sights if you mean to examine the inside of the buildings with me. Dear God, what poverty! Now, I suggest we make our way back so that we will be in time for church.’

It did not seem the time to make any grand speech. Maria was sure the sights he would see on the morrow would disgust him so much that he would have nothing further to do with it. If he shrank from her parents, what would he make of the wretched inhabitants of John Street? thought Maria, forgetting that the duke was not proposing to have any of them for in-laws.

Mr Haddon and Mr Randolph were both in church. It had become their custom to return to Holles Street with the Tribble sisters after the service. The church was St George’s, Hanover Square. Mr Randolph offered his arm to Effy, who smiled at him as she took it. Mr Haddon offered his arm to Amy, who tossed her head and strode off with great mannish steps.

Mr Haddon went after her, caught her by the arm and pulled her round to face him.

‘Look at the young lovers,’ said the duke to Maria. ‘Do you think they know they are in love with each other?’

‘You are hardly a judge of who is in love and who is not,’ pointed out Maria tartly. ‘I do not think you have ever been in love.’

‘No, but I am a good observer of the game. Have you ever been in love, Miss Kendall?’

‘Oh, yes,’ sighed Maria, thinking of all her dream lovers who always said and did the right thing. ‘So many times.’

His face hardened but Maria did not notice, for she had turned her attention back to Amy and Mr Haddon.

‘At least let us discuss the matter like two rational beings,’ Mr Haddon was saying.

‘I don’t feel rational. I don’t
want
to be rational,’ said Amy pettishly.

‘Listen to me, Amy Tribble,’ said Mr Haddon fiercely. ‘I apologize most humbly. You will accept that apology like the lady you are so that we can cease this quarrel and return to our former friendship, which means so much to me.’

Amy blinked tears from her eyes. ‘It does?’

‘Yes, very much.’

Amy gave him a radiant smile and tucked her arm in his.

‘All’s well that ends well,’ sighed the watching Maria.

The duke looked down at her. ‘You must give me the benefit of your experience some day, Miss Kendall.’

‘My experience?’

‘Yes, you must tell me what it is like to be in love not once, but many times.’

‘There will be no opportunity for that, because . . .’ Maria’s voice trailed away. She had been about to finish, ‘because I am terminating the engagement,’ but now was not the time to tell him.

Amy and Effy, to Maria’s surprise, insisted on accompanying her and the duke to ‘his rookery’, as Amy put it. ‘For you are in our charge, dear, and you can catch all sorts of nasty infections in a rookery, apart from being raped and robbed, that is.’

The duke was disappointed to have the escort of the Tribbles but did not quite know why.

But his agent, Mr Biddell, most certainly did know why
he
wished the pair in Jericho when they started their tour.

The trouble started in a ground-floor room which housed the woman and the baby Maria had already met. ‘As you can see,’ said Mr Biddell loudly, ‘there is no doing anything with these people. This room is filthy.’

Effy held a handkerchief to her nose and said faintly, ‘And so would you be, Biddell, if you had to live here. Broken windows, no food, no money. What is your name, my dear?’

‘Betty,’ whispered the woman, clutching the baby.

‘And where is your husband?’

‘Don’t have none.’

‘Are you a prostitute?’ asked Amy abruptly.

‘Was,’ said Sally. ‘Come up to London to get work as a servant and this fellow said as how he would marry me, and once he’d had me, he sort of passed me on.’

‘The old story,’ sighed Amy. ‘Well, something must be done. You can’t stay here. That baby needs air and sunshine. How do you get any money at all?’

‘I helps the rag-picker.’

The duke was busily writing in a notebook. ‘Have you no concern for this poor woman?’ asked Maria fiercely.

The duke turned his attention to Betty. ‘She will need to be moved,’ he said. ‘There is a farm labourer on my estate in Sussex who has lost his wife and has two small children. He is an honest, decent man. You look a strong girl, Betty, despite your circumstances. Arrangements will be made to transfer you to the country, where you will look after this man and his children.’

‘You cannot send her away like a parcel,’ exclaimed Maria.

But Betty had clutched feverishly at the duke’s sleeve. ‘You mean a man of my own and a house of my own?’ she demanded.

‘Yes, yes,’ said the duke, disengaging himself. ‘But see you keep quiet about your past and he will probably marry you. If you philanthropic ladies wish to be of any real help instead of exclaiming at my iniquities, then I suggest you supply this woman and her child with fresh food and clean her up. Now, lead on, Biddell, and stop muttering.’

The sights of the miserable lives in those tenements wrought a change in both the duke and Maria. Maria thought almost fondly of the parents she had so recently disliked and despised. How hard her father had worked to supply her with every luxury, and what a disappointment she had been to him. What were a few beatings compared to the misery these people had to endure? The duke felt his boredom and restlessness and separateness from the rest of the human race slip away as he slowly came to grips with the problem of how to bring some life back into the residents of these horrible, rat-infested quarters. Biddell, who had until that day enjoyed a comfortable, easy life, groaned as the list of the duke’s requirements grew and grew. He was to hire armies of scrubbing women, builders, masons, glaziers and carpenters. He did not need to cope with the villains. They had fled as soon as news of the duke’s arrival had reached their ears. The worthwhile were to be housed in their vacated rooms until their own were restored and repaired. Any man with any skill living in the tenements was to be employed and paid well. The duke grew so enthusiastic that when a raddled old man of great courage called him a stinking aristocrat living off the backs of the poor, he only murmured vaguely, ‘Yes, yes, fellow, but your insults will not help me get anything done. Stop cursing me. Can you read or write?’

‘Both,’ said the old man. ‘Wasn’t I a schoolteacher before my lungs gave out and age got me?’

‘Well, schoolteacher, here is paper and pencil. Go and make a list of the number of tenants, sex, and clothes needed. Stop glaring at me and do as you are told!’

Maria would never forget that long day. The sky was sullen and a chill wind blew through the cracks in the rickety buildings. The duke’s servants, summoned from Cavendish Square, and the agent’s men and a squad of workers hired from an agency, ran hither and thither bringing clothes and food. Scrubbing women scrubbed, rat-catchers worked busily from basement to attic, and as soon as one room was scrubbed clean, a family was moved in. The news of the great renovation spread through the streets, along the Strand and up to the West End. Drawn by the news, Beau arrived on foot and found the duke standing in the street, supervising the erection of scaffolding. ‘Where is Miss Kendall?’ asked Beau.

‘In there somewhere,’ said the duke in an abstracted tone.

Beau gave him a horrified look and then searched the buildings until he found Maria. She was kneeling down in front of a fireplace in a dingy room filled with pallid children and a consumptive mother, trying to coax a coal fire into life.

‘Let me do that, Miss Kendall,’ said Beau. ‘I was never more horrified in my life. What can Berham be thinking of to let you risk your life in such a place? It must be crawling with infection.’

‘It was,’ said Maria, straightening up with a sigh, ‘but as you can see, even this poor room has been scrubbed clean.’

‘They should clean it themselves. You cannot do anything with people like this,’ said Beau contemptuously.

‘Mind your manners, sir,’ said Maria furiously. ‘It is hard to keep clean with no water, no food, and no will to live. These people are not deaf, you know.’

‘Come outside,’ pleaded Beau. ‘Berham has armies of people working here.’

‘I must find the Misses Tribble first.’

‘I should have known they were behind this madness.’

‘No, it is I who am behind this madness,’ said Maria proudly. ‘The duke would not even have known of the existence of this place had I not told him.’

As they went down the stairs, they met Amy Tribble. ‘It’s the mothers who are the biggest problem,’ sighed Amy. ‘Like that poor Betty, they come to London as servant girls, get seduced and put on the streets, and so there is no other way they can make a living.’

Maria’s eyes gleamed with a crusading fire. ‘Berham will know what to do,’ she said.

‘I say,’ came Beau’s plaintive voice, ‘you aren’t going to saddle Berham with the welfare of a parcel of harlots,’ but Maria appeared to have gone deaf.

When they reached the street, she ran up to the duke. Beau could see her talking animatedly and noticed the normally stony duke looking down at her with a certain affectionate amusement on his face.

‘I think I have a plan for them,’ said the duke, ‘but you must not expect too much. They are so corrupt, so beaten down, these women, that they would rather I had brought them gin than scrubbing women and clothes for their children. I fear some of them are past saving.’

‘But you could
try.
’

‘Very well, but do not look so ferocious. You have a smut of soot on your nose. Here, hold still.’ He took out his handkerchief, held her chin in his hand and scrubbed her nose. He smiled down at her and then both went very still, Maria wide-eyed and the duke looking at her curiously, the smile dying on his lips. Neither seemed to hear the tremendous noise and bustle in the street.

He suddenly released her chin and said gently, ‘You should go home. You have done wonders, but this is really no place for you. Beau,’ he called, seeing his friend watching them, ‘please escort Miss Kendall home.’

‘But you will call on me,’ said Maria shyly, ‘and tell me what you have planned for these women?’

‘I shall call this evening, after dinner.’

Beau collected the Tribbles as well, but Maria found no one to share her reforming enthusiasm on the road home.

‘I’m glad that is over,’ said Amy roundly. ‘Berham is wasting his time. He can organize scrubbing and clothes and fire and food until he’s black in the face, but they’ll all just wait until he goes away and sink themselves in a stupor of gin as soon as possible.’

‘I am sure you are wrong,’ cried Maria. ‘There must be hope.’

‘You live in dreams, child,’ said Effy gently.

Maria shook her head fiercely. She felt she had come out into the real world and would never live in dreams again.

‘Poverty is a disease, Miss Kendall,’ said Beau sententiously. ‘You will find they are all responsible for their own condition.’

‘I wouldn’t go as far as that,’ said Amy, remembering her own all-too-recent poverty. ‘It’s a hard world for women.’

‘Not if they accept their role in life,’ said Beau with a laugh.

‘Which is?’ asked Maria.

‘To be pretty and winsome and be the support of some fine fellow.’

He was paying attention to his horses and therefore did not see the look of acute disappointment on Maria’s face. My last dream gone, thought Maria sadly. What a silly, callous brute!

And yet Beau was not unusual in his views. Like the rest of society, he barely saw the plight of the poor of the London streets. Life was but a journey, and God put each man and woman in their appointed station. Everyone knew a pauper had more chance of reaching the Kingdom of Heaven than a rich man, although all the inscriptions on aristocratic tombs declaring proudly ‘He Died Poor’ simply meant his lordship (or her ladyship) had rid himself quickly of all worldly goods on his deathbed in the hope that the Almighty would accept last-gasp poverty as a sign of grace.