Birdcage Walk (19 page)

Charlotte had spent a miserable afternoon after her mission to Highbury. She had thought she would feel glad afterwards, as though a weight had been lifted from her narrow shoulders. That the situation with George would gather momentum and resolve itself now, without her needing to do any more. In her distress at seeing George perched next to the gentleman’s daughter in that nice room, and then the anger that followed when she came home to find George’s note, she had not seen beyond her simple idea for revenge. Having played out her role she now felt utterly flat.

With no wish to be anywhere, she had drifted down to the river, a long walk from Highbury even though it was downhill. The day wasn’t just dull, it entirely matched her mood. The air seemed weighed down with freezing, unshed rain; she wished it would just get on with it and pour if it was going to. No one else seemed to mind, all of them rushing about and shouting to each other, their breath lingering, ghostly pale on the heavy air.

She dragged herself to Cheapside and its sprawling market. It was crowded with people despite the cold, though the good week’s trading before Christmas had made it look more sparse than she remembered seeing it before, some of the traders having sold out, packed up and gone home. One stall with some wares still on display drew her eye. She needed to find something for Annie, though knowing her she wouldn’t be expecting it. The tiny old lady behind the trestle table had accumulated a curious collection of treasures and tokens. Enamel pillboxes and paste brooches jostled for space with mourning rings woven from dead people’s hair and fascinators embellished with peacock feathers. The stallholder fixed Charlotte with a gimlet eye.

“What you after then, girlie? I got cufflinks for your feller, real mother of pearl from the South Seas.”

Charlotte shook her head.

“How much is that hatpin? The one with the bird.”

Amongst the magpie jumble Charlotte had spied one of the simplest pieces. The pin, topped with a small golden bird, its eye a sliver of green stone, would brighten up Annie’s old hat no end.

“That’s two bob to you. I won’t take lower, I’m giving it away as it is. That’s an emerald there and the rest of it ain’t plate neither. Solid gold, that.”

Charlotte handed over the coins without demur and wandered on, pinning the little bird to her own jacket for safekeeping. She had bought it with Annie’s own money, borrowed the day before, but she would take every shift going at Freeman’s after Christmas and pay her back. The old lady watched her go, disappointed that her customer hadn’t wanted to haggle over the cost.

When she arrived back on Avebury Street, Annie was letting herself into the house ahead of her. She couldn’t muster the energy to call out so she watched her sister bustle Eddie and her bags in and kick the door shut with her foot. The urge to carry straight on to the pub and buy herself a neat gin was strong; the thought of the pub full to bursting as it would be on Christmas Eve changed her mind. She unfastened the hatpin and tucked it in her purse out of sight.

“Lottie, is that you back?” Annie looked up from the floor, where she was changing the baby.

“Well, it’s not Ted in a skirt, is it?” She didn’t mean to make the words so sharp but Annie broke into gales of laughter.

“You’re a card, aren’t you? Now, let me think first so I get it right. George was here earlier, he had a message for you.”

Charlotte’s stomach lurched. She wasn’t sure she could bear another of George’s messages, written down or otherwise. A vestige of pride made her desperate at the thought of Annie feeling sorry for her again, especially having to break more bad news to her. Surely George had said it all in his note. He couldn’t yet know about her visit to Highbury, he surely wouldn’t be visiting again until the new year—she’d only seen him there with her own eyes a couple of nights back.

Occupied with putting the baby down, Annie didn’t see Charlotte’s stricken face.

“First he said to say he was sorry about the note, and there was me thinking it was a love note. What did he say to you in it, Lotts, you can tell me now, can’t you?”

“What else?” Charlotte’s hands remained clenched at her sides.

“Alright, hold your horses. He said he was sorry about the note, you weren’t meant to see it, and you were to meet him—if you wanted to, mind—at a quarter to seven sharp on the canal bridge. So what do you think about that, then?” She looked round to see Charlotte’s reaction.

She smiled back at Annie at first, her face relaxing and smoothing as the older sister watched, but then the smile faded again, almost as if Charlotte had mistrusted her own reaction.

“I thought you’d be pleased,” Annie cried. “Isn’t that what you’ve been wanting him to say?”

Charlotte’s eyes darted around the room as though she couldn’t decide, leaving Annie quite mystified.

“Yes, of course it’s what I wanted. But . . . “

“But what? Whatever it is you’re worried about now, don’t be, love. It’s all come right in time for Christmas, that’s all. Listen, I know it’s not until tomorrow but I want you to have your present from me now.”

She went over to the dresser and brought out a small black pouch. Charlotte smiled at her and this time the smile lasted, making her look younger than she had in days.

“Why now, then? You’ve never let me have my present early before.”

Annie laughed. “I know, and I wouldn’t normally hold with it but I thought you could wear them tonight. You want to look nice for George, don’t you?”

Charlotte loosened the strings of the pouch and tipped its contents into the palm of her hand. Dark as tar, and with a shine that glinted even in the dimly lit room, lay a pair of jet bead earrings.

“Do you like them?” Annie’s round face was anxious.

Charlotte flew at Annie in response and squeezed her tightly. When she answered her voice was thick with tears.

“I love them. Thank you. They’ll look grand with my green jacket, won’t they?”

Annie held her back and wiped the beginnings of tears from her sister’s eyes.

“Of course you’ll look grand. He’s lucky to have you, that George Woolfe. See he doesn’t forget that. Now, up you go and get yourself spruced up.” She kissed Charlotte on the top of her head and pushed her towards the stairs. As she went up she looked back over her shoulder.

“Thanks, Annie,” she said softly. “For everything, I mean. You’ve been good to me.”

“Go on now, love. You don’t have to say no more. It’s near enough quarter to already.”

None of Charlotte’s skirts were particularly clean, but she changed regardless, wishing to slough off the clothes she’d been so despondent in all day. As she stepped out of her old skirt and hung it up, it was though she was also casting off her fears about her visit to Highbury, and the consequences she had been dreading all afternoon. She stepped into a dull but presentable skirt and silently thanked Annie as she caught sight of a cleanly pressed cream blouse hanging by the washstand. It was her nicest, with a high collar and a ruffle of lace at the neck. As she buttoned it up she went over George’s message again and, for the first time, felt something like relief flood through her chest. The distant strains of a barrel organ reminded her that it was almost Christmas; she couldn’t even feel her usual bristling of dislike as she heard Ted arrive back from work downstairs.

She took her hair down and as fast as she could, mindful that she mustn’t be too late for George tonight of all nights, began to brush it out. It was full of tangles and she winced as she wrenched the hairbrush through. When it was finally tamed and shone in waves down her back, she coiled it high up on her head, fastening it with her favourite tortoiseshell combs.

Pulling out her old moss green jacket made of soft velveteen, she realised she’d forgotten how much she liked it, with its rich colour and close fit, which fastened to a point at the waist. It matched her best hat with the tall feather. Studying herself in the glass, her eyes gleamed back at her, picking up the lights from the earrings Annie had given her. She hadn’t realised how dull they had grown and how little she’d looked at herself at all lately. She rubbed a little rouge into her cheeks, though in her excitement she hardly needed it.

Picking up her purse to check how much money she had left, she found the Christmas present she’d bought Annie, the bird’s green eye flashing at her out of the purse’s dark interior. Not wanting to lose it in the street, she took a sheet of writing paper and folded it into a package with the bird pin inside, writing Annie’s name on the front. It was the same paper she’d used for her note to Highbury and she felt the sharp pinch of guilt. Pushing the feeling away, she hid the small package in the tin box with Joe Bruce’s letters and then clattered down the stairs. With no wish to hear Ted’s opinion on the day’s events she made straight for the front door, shouting goodbye to Annie over her shoulder.

“Don’t go before I’ve had a look at you all done up nice, then,” cried Annie, but Charlotte pretended she hadn’t heard and hurried up the street in the direction of the canal. If she wasn’t late already, Annie cooing and fussing over her would certainly make her so. She could show off her earrings for her sister tomorrow.

Charlotte didn’t immediately notice George as she approached the bridge. He was looking down at the murky canal water, his face hidden from the nearby gas lamps, and by the dark red scarf he’d wound round his neck to stave off the cold. She stopped dead, suddenly afraid of him. Behind him, she could see the lights of the Southgate and Rosemary Branch pubs and the dark shapes of the revellers within. A song had started up in one of them and, for an instant, Charlotte wished she was inside with them, safe in the press of happy strangers.

Remembering Annie’s cheery words as she had relayed George’s message, Charlotte stepped towards him. It seemed so long since they had spent any time together, or at least time when things were easy between them, that she felt quite paralysed by shyness. When they had first met, George’s awkwardness had compelled Charlotte to be the bold one. She envied the person she had so blithely been with him now, just as she knew she couldn’t hope to emulate her this evening.

“Hello there, stranger,” she ventured, but her voice was so timid that he didn’t stir, his gaze still trained on the still waters of the Regent’s Canal below them. She crept closer still.

“George? It’s me. Annie said you wanted to meet here.”

George looked up, so distracted by his own thoughts that Charlotte plainly saw contrasting moods and emotions move over his face as he took in her arrival, like April clouds briefly revealing and then re-covering the sun.

“I didn’t know if you’d come,” he said without smiling.

“Annie said about the note, that you told her I weren’t meant to see it.”

“I was drunk when I wrote it, and in temper. Cissy found it and thought she’d be helpful, you know how she is.”

“So you didn’t mean it then. You don’t want to be rid of me.”

George tried to smile but the result was strained and showed too much teeth. In the bad light, Charlotte found it oddly disturbing.

“Not for the moment, at least,” he said, and laughed, which again rang out insincerely. When George really laughed he did it almost silently, tears quickly coming to his eyes and his cheeks growing red. Standing at the very centre of the bridge, George’s face remained wan and the laugh echoed off the sodden walls of the tunnel below them. Charlotte suddenly caught a whiff of his breath in the crisp, still air and it was stale with drink.

“Where do you want to go, then?” he said carelessly. “Any of your drinking pals at the Rosemary Branch tonight? Ted and his mate Johnny might be there. What do you say, Lottie?”

“It’s you I want to be with, George, no one else. I’ve missed you, George. Can’t we go somewhere quiet, where we don’t know anyone?”

“What about the Britannia? You like a bit of drama, don’t you? You said to me once you’d have liked to have had a chance to tread the boards, do you remember?”

Charlotte, remembering with a jolt Captain Drew’s words to her, tried to smile self-deprecatingly.

“Oh, I was only joking when I said that, George. You know I was. Me, an actress?”

“I never know what to believe with you. You say one thing one minute and the next . . . ”

Charlotte set off in the direction of Hoxton’s High Street, hoping George would follow and that they could talk of something else. She couldn’t tell what he was getting at. She wanted to ask him why he had sent word to her to meet him if he didn’t want to spend the evening in her company after all.

The pavement outside the theatre was four or five deep with an excitable crowd, waiting for the doors to open and let them in out of the cold. The smell of food people had bought for the evening’s entertainment rose up into the air and reminded Charlotte she’d forgotten to have any supper. A portly man next to her with a florid, jowly face had bought a hand of saveloy sausages which, hunger getting the better of him, he had already unwrapped and begun eating, the steam rising off the meat as thick as smoke.

Dwarfed by the advertisements for Barclay’s Ales were the posters detailing the highlights of the evening’s Christmas pantomime. She and George stood silently side-by-side, waiting along with everyone else for the doors to be unlocked so they could pour in. But just as she heard the clanking of the bolts being drawn back, Charlotte knew with absolute certainty that she didn’t want to go in. They would have to squeeze into those cramped seats in the Gods, their knees touching, and the breath and hum of hundreds of strangers so strangely intimate. She had wanted to be amongst the hordes in the pub before but knew now that she would feel the panic rise in her chest to be stuck so high up, feeling like she might topple down onto the stage, and George sitting there all the time, his silence somehow menacing. She turned to him and looked him full in the face for the first time that evening.

“Let’s go, George. I don’t fancy being cooped up in there for hours after all. We should talk, we’ve got things we need to discuss, haven’t we?”

George shrugged and they jostled their way out of the throng, the air suddenly colder where the crown thinned out.

“So where to, then? You don’t want to go to the Britannia and you don’t want to go to our locals.”

“Why don’t we just get a bus somewhere? Go somewhere new, have a clean start.”

“We’re not moving, are we?”

“No, I just mean it would be nice to go somewhere completely away from here. From anywhere we knew. Away from Hoxton and even the river.”

Charlotte decided that they should catch the first bus north and go as far as it would take them. The one that trundled into sight soon enough was bound for Manor House, just north of Finsbury Park. She paid their fares and, in the ensuing silence between them, kept her eyes on her clasped hands. They sat downstairs, inside, all the other seats being occupied. When the bell was rung to announce the end of the route, Charlotte was eager to find a pub and have the distraction of a drink in front of her. Perhaps it would loosen George’s tongue too.

“I don’t want to stop here,” he said as she looked back to see why he didn’t follow.

Charlotte went meekly back and stood waiting with him, biting her lip to keep from asking what was wrong with where they were. From where they stood she could see the inviting aura of a large corner pub, the lights winking at her. The question she wanted to ask didn’t tumble out until they had boarded the second bus.

“Where we going anyway, George?” she wheedled gently, as they took seats on the top deck.

She had tried hard to keep quiet but George was being so distant; a quiet sort of anger that was being carefully kept down seemed to emanate from him, she could feel the force of it vibrating on the brittle air. He didn’t answer her for quite a time, choosing instead to fish in his trouser pocket for change slowly and deliberately, mindful, it seemed to Charlotte, that he didn’t touch her with his out-thrust elbow. When the conductor swung up to the top deck, George paid for the two of them. Charlotte looked down at her hands again, pleased that he had acknowledged her presence in this meagre way.

The bus jangled and stuttered north, apparently stopping at every intersecting street for men, all men it seemed, whose caps were identical to George’s. From her vantage point above them as they queued to board the bus she could see only the flat circle of cloth of their tops. They moved off once again, and Charlotte realised that the rocking motion of the badly-sprung bus had sent the man in front of them into a fitful sleep. The extra flesh on his back was putting an enormous strain on the stitches of his jacket as he hunched forward into his doze, his jerking head comically small on those great shoulders. Despite her anxiety at George’s reticence and what lay ahead, watching him made her own eyelids begin to droop.

“I fancied coming up Tottenham way,” George suddenly spoke out, making Charlotte jump. “I think I told you I used to come up here with my dad when I was a boy.”

“You used to trap the birds up here, didn’t you?” Charlotte’s mind had raced to catch the memory and please George with it.

“That’s it. I used to love those trips, just me and him. It felt clean up there, like I could really breathe.”

“Have you never come since?”

“A couple of times. Dad still did for years, of course. Came on his own instead. The last time was . . . ” He broke off and laughed, the sound hollow.

“Was when, George?”

“You don’t want to know about all that, Lottie. Bit too close to the bone, I reckon, given what’s been going on lately.”

She didn’t reply to that and he was glad she didn’t press him on it, or he might just have told her. He didn’t know why he’d wanted to come but the urge, at the bus stop when he realised what other routes connected at Manor House, was overpowering. Already the air smelt fresher to him, with that strange tang that he thought was probably how it was by the sea, way off to the east in the emptiness beyond London. As he inhaled deeply he saw his father’s face when they had last been here together, when he had confessed his awful secret about his mother’s betrayal. At the time, he had wanted to hit it out of frustration. Tonight it made him want to cry as he had on Cissy’s lap earlier. He concentrated on the rough fibres covering the back of the large man in front, waiting for the painful lump in his throat to dissolve. When he had recovered he spoke again.

“I think I’ve seen a hotel we could have a drink at, right next to the marshes it is.”

“Seems a funny place to put a hotel, don’t it?” asked Charlotte, hopeful that the worst of George’s anger had passed. “I always thought of the marshes as a strange sort of place. They say you can see the fog come rolling over them ever so quick, like it’s coming to catch you or something. I’m glad we’ve come though. It feels almost like a holiday, like we’re miles and miles from home. And they say a change is as good as a holiday, don’t they?”

Charlotte heard her voice quaver, the combination of the cliché and her nervous brightness suddenly making her too loud, so that the big man in front woke with a jolt and half turned to frown at her.

“Park Station’s not far from the hotel, that’s why they put it there,” said George, his voice still gruff. “It’s named for the station too. It’s on the Great Eastern line going up to the Midlands.”

George resumed his silence and Charlotte heard her silly words again, loud in her mind. Before long, the sense that the empty marshes surrounded them grew. George pulled the cord and went down the stairs quickly, without looking back to check Charlotte was behind him.

Back on the street, he seemed to know where he was going and she hurried after him down a deserted side road, her boot heels sounding shrill in the sudden silence. The lane took them between the backs of two rows of houses. They were unnaturally quiet for such a festive night and Charlotte realised they must be condemned, not even a solitary lamp showing as a beacon amongst the rows of darkened windows.

She was starting to despair, her heart jumping at every echo and creak, when the lights of the Park Hotel came into view at the end of the lane. However as they drew nearer, Charlotte still behind George, she saw that what had sounded, and at first glance looked, like a cut above their usual drinking houses was in fact rather shabby. There could only be half a dozen rooms upstairs to allow the establishment to call itself a hotel. Charlotte could see from outside the tired curtains hastily pulled across and wondered who might end up there on Christmas Eve.

The drinking facilities rivalled many of Hoxton’s large pubs, with three bars to choose from. George hesitated before entering the saloon, barely holding the door open for Charlotte still a few steps behind him, who caught it as it swung towards her. The green plush of the banquette seats (wooden chairs were relegated to the public bar) was only a shade darker than her velveteen jacket. Sinking down into one of them, she glanced down to check the jacket buttons were still fastened. Her worrying had made her a little thinner in the last few weeks; she usually had to loosen the lowest button when she sat down, so the material didn’t pull and stretch at the waist.

George returned from the bar with two glasses of gin, which they both sipped at without speaking. Charlotte thought she would wait till the alcohol gave her some warmth and courage before attempting to rouse George from his brooding silence. After a time, four men came in, laughing at the tail-end of a joke. They scanned the room as they waited at the bar.

One of them was taller than his friends, though he didn’t stoop as other men might have, in order to catch the conversation. He stood with them but was not of them, and seemed unconcerned by it. With George intent on the depths of his half-drunk drink, this man, his face incongruously childish on his solid frame, looked in Charlotte’s direction and let the look linger. Feeling his gaze, she concentrated hard on looking anywhere else but eventually her eyes moved to meet his of their own, inevitable volition. Assuming that George wouldn’t notice, or perhaps care even if he did, she allowed the stranger a tiny smile before looking demurely down into her own drink. Inwardly she felt an ember glow; that feeling of drawing such simple admiration an old friend she hadn’t seen in some time. It gave her the confidence to speak at last.

“So, how you’ve been then, George?”

“Not so bad,” he said too quickly.

“It’s been a few weeks since we’ve seen each other. It’s gone so slow, but I thought you wanted to be left alone. That’s why I stayed away at first. Then I got that note out of the blue and I thought that was it. I didn’t know what to do with myself when I read it.”

“I explained about that already. Cissy should never have delivered it.”

“I know, but you still meant it at the time,” Charlotte turned towards him but he remained facing forwards. “Even if you were drunk and it was only for the minute you wrote it, you still felt strongly enough to write it down, fold it and put it in an envelope. You never threw it away, did you?”

“Look, leave it, will you? I’ll get some more drinks. Same again?”

He walked unsteadily over to the bar and she wondered how much he had drunk before they met. His skin smelt of it, as though the alcohol was escaping through his pores, sour and sweet at the same time. Standing at the bar with the group of men who had come in earlier, she briefly locked eyes again with the fellow who’d looked at her, and was still looking over at her periodically.