Bicycle Built for Two (5 page)

“Yeah? My mother got married. See the
result?” She yanked at her scarf, and Alex winced when he saw the
dark, brutal bruises thus exposed. “Marriage isn’t for me, thanks
anyway.”

“You know very well such a—a marriage as—as
that is uncommon, Miss Finney.”

“Not where I come from, it isn’t. I’ve got
better things in store for my life than marriage, believe me.”

“You sound like a suffragist,” Alex said
stiffly. He didn’t hold with woman’s suffrage. What did women know
about the world and politics?

“Suffragist, my foot,” Kate scoffed. “I
don’t give a hang about suffrage. I don’t have time to think about
suffrage. All I’m trying to do is put food on the table. And I
won’t let you stop me, if I can help it.”

“I’m not trying to stop you from putting
food on your table.” He was becoming annoyed. This little chit was
trying to make him out to be some kind of ogre. “What I’m trying to
do is maintain a proper tone at the fair I helped to create.”

“Yeah? Well, somebody said it was all right
for Madame Esmeralda to set up a booth on the Midway, and somebody
else said it was all right for Little Egypt to dance there, so I
guess we don’t really have anything to talk about, do we? I guess
everybody else thinks our tone is proper enough.” She turned and
resumed looking out at the street.

Alex saw that her fingers were tapping out a
nervous tattoo on her handbag. He got the impression her state of
anxiety didn’t concern herself, but someone else. The person at the
hospital? “Are you worried about someone at the hospital, Miss
Finney?” He was surprised when he heard the question, since he
hadn’t intended to ask it.

Again, she turned and gave him a look that
told him what she thought of him. Not much. If anything.

“Yeah,” she said sarcastically. “You might
say so.”

“May I ask who it is?” That was polite,
wasn’t it? He’d sounded as if he cared, even though he didn’t,
really.

“You can ask. I don’t choose to answer.”

“Dash it, you’re a very rude woman, Miss
Finney!”

“Gee, I’m really sorry. I usually try to be
nice to people who are trying to ruin my life.” The carriage pulled
up in front of the hospital. Before it came to a complete stop,
Kate had opened the door and leapt out.

Alarmed, Alex lurched to the door after her.
“Miss Finney! Miss Finney! Wait!”

She didn’t wait. Furious, Alex decided he
didn’t need to lower himself to Kate’s level and charge after her,
but waited until his driver had guided the horses to the curb. Then
he descended from the carriage in a dignified manner and spoke to
Frank, the coachman. “Wait here for a moment, Frank. I’ll be back
as soon as possible.”

“Sure thing, Mr. English.” Frank touched his
cap in a short salute and set the brake. “I’ll be right here.”

Tugging at his expensive worsted frock coat
to eliminate any wrinkles, Alex started up the walkway toward the
front doors of the hospital. To his irritation, Kate had already
vanished into the building. He, however, wasn’t through with her
yet, no matter what she thought. He was going to get to the bottom
of the puzzle that was Kate Finney, whether she wanted him to or
not, dash it. Alex hated being thwarted. And to be thwarted by an
unlettered, unsophisticated girl from the slums, at that—well, it
was too much, and he wouldn’t stand for it.

# # #

It took Kate only a minute to ascertain that
her mother had been taken to the Charity Ward. She’d expected it
would be so, because that’s where her kind always ended up, if they
ended up in hospitals at all. Generally speaking, they just died
without the diversion of a hospital stay.

She ran up the staircase, holding her skirts
in her hand, heedless of the gaping hospital orderlies staring at
her flashing ankles. Her mother’s ward was number 3B. Kate jerked
the door open and stood, panting, staring in distress at the rows
upon rows of cots with their pathetic occupants. She had to swallow
a cry of mingled rage and pain before she stepped, with more seemly
aplomb than she’d heretofore exhibited, into the room.

Her heart raged as she walked down the first
row of cots, searching for her mother’s haggard face. It wasn’t
fair. Nothing was fair. That her mother, a blameless, pure soul,
should have been deceived into marrying her father, a devil
incarnate who could put on a good show when he wanted to, was one
of life’s more bitter ironies. Her mother hadn’t deserved such a
brute as Kate’s father. Kate knew that Ma would have left the
bastard long since, except that he’d threatened to injure the
children in retaliation. So she’d stayed with him, and he’d only
injured her.

That was before Kate was old enough to take
matters into her own hands. The last straw had been when her father
had come home, reeling drunk, after having spent any money he’d
made doing odd jobs. He’d been mad and mean, and he’d needed
someone to take out his anger on, so he’d headed straight for
Kate’s mother. It had been Kate who’d beaned the beast over the
head with a cast-iron skillet. And it had been Kate who’d dragged
her mother out of the house and to her own small room over the
butcher’s shop.

Hazel Finney had been terrified, but Kate
had lectured her long and hard about the wisdom of finally, after
far too many years, getting away from her husband. “He’s no good,
Ma. You know that better than anyone.”

Her mother, already sick
with consumption, not to mention in a general agony of spirit and
soul, had broken down and sobbed. She’d nearly broken Kate’s heart
with her moans of apology, as if it had been
her
fault she’d married a wretch and
a drunkard.

“I swear to you, Katie, that I didn’t know,”
she’d cried. “I swear on my mother’s Bible.”

“I know it, Ma. I know it.”

Kate had never been much good at being a
child, having spent her youth figuring out how to survive in an
uncertain and often brutal world, but it had been then that she’d
taken over the mothering of her family. Her siblings had left home
by then, driven away by the misery her father perpetrated.

Since home had never offered any succor but
that which their mother could sneak them behind their father’s
back, Kate’s brothers had taken to visiting Kate when they needed a
good meal or a shoulder to cry on. They were all overjoyed when
Mrs. Finney joined Kate in the room over the butcher’s shop.

Every time any one of the children ran into
Mr. Finney on the street, he threatened to kill them if they didn’t
tell him where his wife was. Fortunately, all the Finney children
were spryer than the old man. It was embarrassing, they all agreed,
to be cursed by their own father and threatened with death, but it
was better than living with the mean old son of a bitch.

He’d meant the threats, as Kate had recently
discovered. If it hadn’t been for the unexpected arrival of Belle
Monroe into Madame’s booth, Kate would be dead right now, and her
mother would probably be back under her father’s thumb. The idea
made Kate shudder. She didn’t even consider that the police might
have arrested the old man for attempted murder. The police didn’t
pay much attention to what happened to people in Kate’s station in
life. They spent all their concern on the Alex Englishes of the
world.

“Ma!” Kate’s relief at finding her mother
still breathing was only mitigated by the dismal surroundings and
her mother’s obvious distress. She fell to her knees beside the
cot. “Ma, what happened?”

Her mother’s eyelids lifted, revealing
watery blue eyes that held a world of pain and disappointment. Yet
the woman managed to smile at her daughter. “Katie. I’m fine,
really. I told Billy not to bring me, but he insisted.”

“Nuts. I ordered Billy to bring you whenever
he thought you needed help when I wasn’t around, Ma.” She wouldn’t
tell her mother so, but Kate understood why her brother had
insisted Mrs. Finney go to the hospital. She looked even worse than
usual. In truth, she looked like she was already dead and was only
still talking by pure chance.

Her mother’s smile made Kate want to scream
imprecations against the fates or God or whoever was in charge of
things. That her mother, who was the gentlest, most loving human
being in the world, should have to suffer like this wasn’t fair,
and Kate resented it. Nevertheless, she smiled back, as cocky as
ever. “Tell me the truth, Ma. What happened?”

Hazel Finney tried to sigh, which
precipitated a spasm of coughing. Kate held her breath and gritted
her teeth as she watched her mother’s affliction. “It’s okay, Ma.
Take your time.” Kate dug a clean handkerchief from her handbag and
wiped tears and perspiration from her mother’s withered cheeks.
Hazel Finney herself lifted the stained handkerchief she’d been
holding and discreetly mopped the blood and spittle from her mouth.
She still had her pride, Kate knew, for whatever good that had ever
done her.

“I had a little coughing spell,” Mrs. Finney
told her daughter when she could.

“I see.” Kate hated feeling helpless.
Unfortunately, no matter how much grit and determination she
had—and she had tons—she was helpless when pitted against the White
Plague. That didn’t stop her from fighting it tooth and nail.

Hazel smiled through the tears that still
pooled in her eyes, left over from her coughing. The coughing
spasms took everything out of her. “And how about you, Katie? Did
you dance tonight?”

Kate gave her the sauciest grin in her
repertoire. “You betcha, Ma. I gave ‘em a great performance.”

Hazel patted Kate’s cheek with a hand that
looked too heavy for its arm. “That’s my Katie.” Her vague smile
faded and died. “But what’s this, darling?” She reached for the
scarf tied around her neck, and Kate cursed herself for loosening
it in her pique at Alex English.

Quickly reaching for her mother’s hand, Kate
drew it away from the scarf. “It’s nothing, Ma. Just a piece of my
costume. I guess I forgot to take it off.”

Her mother’s troubled eyes told Kate that
Hazel didn’t believe her. “Kate, if Herbert did that—”

”Ma, I’m fine.” Kate made her voice go hard,
as if with irritation at Hazel’s prying. “It’s nothing.”

Mrs. Finney stared at her daughter with eyes
that told Kate she knew exactly what had happened. “Oh, Katie. My
precious Katie. Don’t let him hurt you, Kate. Please.”

Kate knew that if her mother wasn’t so weak,
she’d rise from the cot and try to tackle the world for her
children. Fighting the world and Herbert Finney for her children’s
sake was what had ruined her health.

“Nuts, Ma. It’s nothing. Honest. You just
stop thinking like that. Here, Take some water.” Kate knew the
these spasms left her mother weak and thirsty. “I’ll lift your
head.”

With a sigh, Hazel Finney gave up. “Thank
you, Katie. You’re the best daughter anyone ever had.”

“Nuts.” As ever, Kate swallowed the bitter
tears clogging her throat as she poured water from a cracked
pitcher into a cracked glass standing on the table beside the cot.
Then she very carefully lifted her mother’s head and raised the
glass to her mother’s mouth. Hazel drank a few sips before her eyes
closed and Kate could tell she was too exhausted even to drink more
water. Without speaking, she lowered Hazel’s head to the
pillow.

“Thank you, Katie,” Hazel whispered without
opening her eyes.

“Sure thing, Ma. I’m going to talk to the
nurses now. You tell me if they don’t treat you right, you
hear?”

Without opening her eyes, Hazel managed a
gurgling laugh. “They treat me fine, Katie. You just don’t worry
about me.”

Fat chance. Kate wouldn’t
say so. Rather, she squeezed her mother’s hand, rose from her
kneeling position, and squared her shoulders. Feeling rather as she
expected knights of old felt when preparing to go off to war, she
marched back down the row of cots in search of the nurses. Kate
knew they didn’t pay much attention to charity cases. Why should
they? But she wasn’t going to let them get away with
ignoring
her
mother.

Chapter Three

Alex had never been to this wing of the huge
hospital. He’d visited friends at Saint Mildred’s occasionally, and
once or twice had visited on behalf of an agricultural charity or
benevolent association. He’d donated lots of money to the hospital,
but he hadn’t actually observed the ward at which his charitable
donations had been hurled.

The cold walls, which had once been painted
white and which were now fading to a creamy yellow, made him
shiver. The hospital board hadn’t wasted any pretty scenic prints
on these walls. And there was no flutter of nurses eager to be of
service to the patients. There were no flowers, no boxes of
chocolates, no baskets of fruit, no pretty dressing gowns. For that
matter, there were no rooms.

When he opened the door to Ward 3B, in fact,
all he saw were several straight rows of small, cheap cots, each
one filled with a huddled form. The room wasn’t quiet, as he
expected a hospital room to be. Rather, moans and coughs and sobs
greeted his ears. He saw one white-clad form bending over a cot
what seemed like half a mile away, and he took the form for one of
the nursing sisters.

With a feeling of impending contamination,
Alex steeled himself and ventured forth into the room. It seemed to
take him forever to reach the nurse. He tried not to look at the
people on the cots, but he couldn’t help himself.

Looking was a mistake. Alex had never been
this close to utter desperation and hopelessness before. He didn’t
like it. How did people sink this low? Was their destitution their
fault?

He’d always believed poverty to be a
man-made condition, and one in which only the meanest of souls
wallowed. But most of these people were women, and the few men he
saw didn’t look particularly debauched. Rather, they looked
sick.