Birdcage Walk (36 page)

George inhaled shakily, his head spinning, though he hardly felt the jolt of surprise at the judge’s words. Even as they had been spoken he felt as though he had heard them a dozen times before, and in one way he had—in his sleep and in the wakeful hours before dawn. He searched the faces turned towards him for his father and Cissy. Though Cissy’s legs had apparently buckled, her small body wracked with sobs and only held up by their father, he was looking straight at George, a stricken expression on his face.

George gulped noisily before speaking so softly that almost every person in the room involuntarily leaned in his direction.

“I can assure you, sir,” he began, his voice growing stronger. “That I have committed no crime and certainly not such an atrocious crime as this to upset my poor father’s home. I say again, I am innocent of it.”

As he fell silent again, two burly constables left their posts at the courtroom door and approached George, who suddenly gripped the wooden ledge in a panic.

“Please, sir, your honour, let me see my family before they take me down. I beg you, please. Just for a minute.”

The judge’s face remained impassive for a long moment, the only sounds in the court echoing in from the distant outside world, everyone inside the room seemingly holding their breath. He exhaled slowly, looking up at George and then over to Mr. Woolfe and the inconsolable Cissy.

“Mr. and Miss Woolfe may approach the dock and speak with the prisoner. Give them five minutes,” he said.

Mr. Woolfe wasted no time, and half-dragged Cissy towards George past the rest of the public, the court reporters and jury, all of them transfixed and immobilised by the scene. George found he could not move until his father reached him and gripped his hands tightly in his own. They stared at each for a long moment, until Mr. Woolfe’s faded eyes filled. Still he did not drop George’s hands but let the tears spill freely down his creased cheeks. Cissy, who had been clinging to her father’s waist, managed to straighten up and go round to the entrance of the dock and let herself in. One constable moved as if to stop her but then changed his mind and stepped back. Inside with George, she embraced him fiercely from the back, the side of her head pressing into the cleft between his shoulder blades.

Still George didn’t cry, which was strange, as he’d had to fight the urge to many times during the previous hours. He thought the tears would certainly come later, when he was locked up in the condemned cell, and not even within earshot of Sam Jelsey’s snoring, as he’d foolishly thought.

“I didn’t do it, dad, but they won’t listen,” he whispered as his father pulled him close, the hard ledge of the dock between them. “What will I do? They will hang me soon but I have not done it. The man who has is still walking about out there, as free as a bird, and I will hang in his place. Dad, you must help me. I cannot bear this.”

Mr. Woolfe composed himself and then nodded. “I will go and speak to Mr. Windsor, ask to see Mr. Booth, see what can be done. There will be something we can do. There must be. Justice has not been done here today.”

The allotted five minutes were up. The constables approached once again. Mr. Woolfe kissed his son on the forehead, holding his head gently between his hands, just as he had done on the day George had arrived at Wiltshire Row in his new uniform, and a hundred times before that when George was a boy.

“Cissy and I will visit you tomorrow,” he said, an unsteady smile on his lips. “I will have some news for you by then.”

Cissy was still incoherent, her entire frame shuddering with emotion and shock, and Mr. Woolfe had to prise her fingers from her brother’s waist before leading her slowly away. George watched them go, his father’s head held high as he passed out of the courtroom with his arm firmly around his daughter, his cheeks still defiantly wet. When they were out of sight, George turned to the constables and offered himself to them before they could step up into the dock to take his arms.

On waking the next morning, it took George half a minute to remember where he was. As soon as he realised, taking in the bars on the windows, the damp walls and the coarseness of his blanket, he felt as though he had been winded. Glancing over his shoulder he saw that the two prison officers guarding him were slumped fast asleep against the far wall, their regular breathing just audible now George was fully awake. It was strange having them there. He knew their job was to stop him committing suicide but even that sort of company was preferable to George than being alone.

He had passed the night surprisingly easily. He had expected a succession of dreadful nightmares featuring the gallows but none had come. It was clever what the brain did sometimes, he thought, saving you from yourself when you least expected it. It was quiet without the rich suck and blow of Sam’s snoring next door. George guessed it was still very early, but it was difficult to tell now the long winter nights had begun to recede.

The condemned cells were in a different part of Newgate. Situated on the ground floor of the building, the clamour that had risen up from the shops and businesses of Newgate Street to reach his last cell was muffled here. The room—twice the size of a normal cell and with two barred windows instead of one—seemed to catch the sun in early morning. Despite everything, that fact served to lighten George’s mood. It would be a fine day outside.

Being careful not to scrape it against the stone floor and wake the guards, George moved his narrow cot so it was in the path of the soft light and lay back down again. The longer he was awake, the tighter the nerves in his stomach seemed to knot themselves; he didn’t think he would be able to manage any breakfast.

The prison chaplain has visited him the previous evening, after he had been taken from the courtroom. He had seemed a kind man, but George didn’t believe in any of that and so he hadn’t stayed long. When George was young he had simply accepted the religion his mother had inherited from her own parents. He knew the language of it and its rituals were old friends; if anyone had thought to ask he would certainly have said he was a Christian. But after his mother died it had all seemed rather foolish, and imbued with no deeper meaning than the widows who displayed their grief with black crepe dresses in the latest fashions. When his mother had died he had looked on her body and seen a pile of flesh and bones that would start to smell if left, just like any other meat.

That seemed to him to be the truth of it. Of course he had hoped that her soul had departed to heaven, as he had been taught to believe, but his doubts wouldn’t be quieted. In the end, he’d pushed away the guilty thoughts and refused to think about it at all. Now, faced with his own imminent death, the leap of faith that others made so easily had yawned even wider for George. He wondered if it was precisely because he needed it that it had turned its back; that needing it had somehow exempted him. He believed he would be quite alone in death, and he didn’t see how anything or anyone would convince him otherwise.

He lay in something of a trance for the next couple of hours, his face turned towards the nearest window while the colour of the sky turned from the buttery shades of dawn into a pale, cloudless blue. The now familiar noises of the prison coming to life echoed around him. The early dawn was the quietest time of the day; in the dead of night there was always someone screaming or bellowing.

He was just thinking about getting up before someone delivered his breakfast when footsteps approached along the corridor. The two guards began to stir, one opening his eyes and grimacing at the sunlight that fell across his face. George sprang up and straightened the blanket before pushing the bed back against the wall. Its metal frame left white scrape marks on the stones that he scuffed at with his foot as the rattle of keys sounded at the door.

“Keep it down, Woolfe. I’ve only just bleedin’ woke up.” It was the larger of the two guards George had seen for the first time the previous evening, his vast shoulders straining at the seams of his uniform as he got up and stretched. “What time is it?” he asked his companion, shaking him when he didn’t answer.

Another guard came in then, having wrestled with the heavy lock.

“You need to twist to the left first,” said the big guard, taking the breakfast tray he’d brought in. He put it on the end of the bed.

“He’s got a visitor,” said the new guard, tilting his head in George’s direction. “She’s coming up now.” He left.

“You hear that, Woolfe? You’d better look sharp.”

George couldn’t imagine that Cissy had come on her own without their father. For a moment, the faces of the two Drew women flashed across his mind but he dismissed them. Miss Clemmie had shown her support during the trial, but he was now a convicted murderer; he wouldn’t hear from them again, he was sure of it. Milly was the only other person he could think of, but that didn’t seem likely.

The guards had gone to wait in the corridor, chatting amongst themselves and not bothering to lock the door while the visitor made her way through the maze of twisting corridors and staircases, so deliberately confusing that even they, the warders, had been known to lose all sense of direction. George stood up, trying to feel ready. He had attempted to smarten himself up, spitting into his hand and trying to smooth his hair back with it, but he knew how thin and drawn he must look. The breakfast tray lay untouched, but he would have time enough to eat it after the mysterious visitor had gone.

When she came in, he was still half-expecting to see Milly appear there, his eyes already anticipating her slight frame. Instead it was Annie who stood before him and he felt quite disorientated. Up close, she looked as gaunt in the face as George thought he must. Worry and grief had melted much of her bulk away and, when she walked in, she had also lost her bustling manner. George realised with a horrible pang of loss that without the extra flesh padding her face and neck she looked more like Charlotte than he had ever realised. The same sharp chin had emerged in Annie’s pared down face and even her eyes, which George had never noticed before, seemed elongated, just as her sister’s had been.

“Annie, I didn’t expect you,” George said eventually, after the door was locked behind her, the guards apparently willing to give them some privacy. He was unsure whether to approach or keep his distance.

“I’m sure you didn’t,” she replied, but her voice wasn’t angry.

A silence fell between them and, absurdly, George hoped neither of the guards was eavesdropping outside. Just as he was summoning the nerve to ask how she was, Annie crossed the small cell to one of the windows.

“Ain’t much of a view, is it?” she said softly. She looked back at him then and he found he couldn’t look away, her intense gaze was so like Charlotte’s.

“Do you miss her?” she asked, the words so quiet he almost didn’t catch them. “I do. I think of her every day. She’s the first thought on my mind every morning, and the last when I go to bed.” She laughed bitterly. “I suppose everyone grieving says that.”

“I do miss her,” George said. “I’m like you. She’s so often in my thoughts that I only notice it if I haven’t thought about her for a while. And that doesn’t happen very often. Annie—“

“Don’t, George,” she interrupted. “I know what you’re going to say and I know it already. That’s why I come here. I know you didn’t do it.”

George sat down on the bed, the contents of his breakfast tipping slightly so that he had to put the tray on the floor. Annie came and sat next to him, though not so close that they touched.

“When I found out you’d lied about where you’d last seen her, I had my doubts,” Annie continued. “Ted was convinced, of course. But the more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t make it fit together in my head. I thought the trial would make my mind up for me and it has, but not in the way I thought it would.”

George looked down at his hands, which gripped his knees as she talked. Next to him, Annie had adopted the same position.

“You didn’t do it, did you?” Annie had turned to look at him and George met her familiar eyes.

“No, I never could have . . . hurt her,” he said. “I didn’t always treat her as I should’ve done. My own stupid jealousy got in the way sometimes. Too often. But I’d never have beaten her or . . . “ His voice tailed off.

“I knew it,” said Annie, and when George looked he could see tiny coals of comfort glowing in the depths of her eyes. “I hated to think it was you, that the last thing she thought was that you hated her enough to kill her. Perhaps I shouldn’t say so, but I’d rather it was a stranger. It’s not so much of a betrayal that way, at least that’s how I see it.”

George nodded. “Yes, I see what you mean, but I can never forgive myself for leaving her there on her own. He must have been nearby, whoever did it. He might have seen us, seen me go off without her.” He looked desperately at Annie and she leaned over to pat his hand.

“I know well enough how Lottie could be in a fight,” she said. “She couldn’t let anything go and she’d keep on until you lost your temper. It was better to go off than stay and hit her, like lots of other would have done.”

“Can you forgive me, Annie? Not just for leaving her by herself but for not telling you the truth on Christmas Day too?” He bowed his head, not wanting to see her shake her head.

Annie sighed. “I’ve thought about it for a long time and I know why you lied. You were frightened, weren’t you? And out of your wits worrying about where she could have got to as well. You knew everyone would think you had something to do with it, and you were right. I don’t blame you, George. My poor little sister was already dead by Christmas morning. Nothing you said to me later could have changed that.”

“I know,” said George, his voice shaking. “But if I had just gone back instead of getting on that bus. Or if I hadn’t thought of going up to Tottenham at all . . . ”

Annie laid her hand on George’s again. “It’s no good thinking like that. It’ll send you mad, especially in this place.” She looked around her and shuddered. “Look, I’ve got to be going now. Ted don’t know I’m here and he would go spare if he knew. Listen, George, I know it was him who got you found at those barracks and I’m sorry for it. I would rather you were hundreds of miles from here. You might never have come back here and had a fresh start, made a new life for yourself. He didn’t tell me he was going to do it or I’d have tried to stop him. He’s a vindictive man, Ted. I don’t know how I didn’t see it before.”

She got to her feet, shaking her head. “He had a grudge against you two, though I can’t think why. If it wasn’t for my Eddie . . . ” She left the words hanging in the air and crossed to the window again.

“I went to the police yesterday, you know. Said I didn’t think it was you, that it didn’t add up you being like that when you’d always been so good and patient with Lottie. They wasn’t interested, though. Said it was ‘an irrelevance,’ that big fair-haired one did. Pearn. I’m sorry, George.”

He went to her and clasped her hand to his chest. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for, Annie. I’m so grateful that you came. It means a great deal to me to know you think I never did such a terrible thing. It will help me when it comes to . . . that day.”

Annie shivered again before kissing George on the cheek. “Goodbye now, George. I won’t come again, but I’ll think of you.” She walked quickly to the door and rapped on it, her fingers trembling as they tried to locate a handkerchief inside the sleeve of her plain dress.

After she’d gone and his two guards had resumed the previous evening’s game of cards on a bench by the door, George found he could eat a little of the bread on his tray. He felt stunned by Annie’s unexpected visit and, though fear still lurked in the pit of his stomach, it had slightly diminished because of it. For the moment, he felt almost calm. Lying back down on his bed, the air in the cell warmer from the still-climbing sun, he slipped gratefully into a dreamless sleep.