Birdcage Walk (6 page)

It was late when Charlotte came to that same Saturday morning, long after George had gone out to meet the day. A thick bar of yellow light cleaved the fireplace in two where the curtain was too narrow to cover the window and, from the position of the sun’s rays on the wall, she knew it couldn’t be far off noon. Throwing off the blankets that clung to her, unbearably stifling now that she was fully awake, Charlotte swung her feet down to the cool, dry floorboards. She thought about pulling back the curtain but the ache behind her eyes stopped her. The bed was a mess, her sister’s clean sheets a creased rumple where she had half pulled them off in her fitful sleep to reveal a portion of the mattress and its collection of ancient stains.

She crossed to the dresser, which rocked as she bumped it clumsily, and splashed her face. The water had lost the early morning chill she usually resented and now missed. Today it felt thick and dusty, as if a gentle pressure with the tip of her finger wouldn’t break the surface.

On her way down the stairs, she could hear the ominous sounds of Annie clattering the fire irons and pans about in the grate. Deft and neat around the house, she only made a noise when her ire was up. Perhaps it was Ted this time.

“Nice of you to honour us with your bleedin’ presence,” Annie cried out before Charlotte had managed to speak, and continued to crash metal against metal as Charlotte sank into a chair and rested her elbows on the table, her head in her hands.

“You should have woke me earlier,” she muttered at Annie’s back, tightly bound into its uniform of rough grey cotton, the clear outline of spare flesh showing above the line of her corset.

“Oh, should I have indeed?” Annie exclaimed. “I’ve got better things to do than rouse Lady Muck, you know. And seeing as what time you and ‘im rolled in, drunk as lords, I thought you might well be longer. Do you even know what time it was you come in?”

Charlotte stayed quiet this time, looking meekly down, knowing that Annie had her own answer.

“Well, I’ll tell you, shall I? Because there was no mistaking it from where I was, what with Ted falling over the table and smashing ma’s teapot, and you shouting the odds about George never coming out any more. It was gone one in the morning.”

“I’m sorry, Annie, I am. We didn’t mean to stay out so late, but Ted’s mate Johnny turned up and Ted said we couldn’t just go then, it would look rude, so we stayed for another.”

“Another half dozen, more like. I was ashamed of you, knowing the neighbours would hear you and think I needed my head looked at for putting up with you both.”

Charlotte forced herself to get up and reach out to her sister, who shook her off.

“No, it’s all very well coming on all affectionate now you’re in my bad books but I don’t want to see your face this morning. All I want from you is that overdue rent you owe me. At least Ted, for all his sins, keeps us under this roof. You’ve not paid me any keep for three weeks now and after last night I’ve had it. Either you pay me back what you owe or you’re out and I don’t care if it is Christmas soon. You’ve had enough goodwill from me to last six Christmases.”

Charlotte dropped her hand and stalked back upstairs. Her good dress was in a pile where she’d stepped out of it in the early hours. As she picked it up to shake it out, the smell of stale beer and damp ashes rose up at her and a memory of the previous night tumbled out.

She hadn’t expected that Johnny to show up, though she’d been relieved not to be alone with Ted after Annie had shooed them out of the house while she got the baby off to sleep. Ted had once said something about Johnny marrying some Scotch girl who had a room in Spitalfields, but Charlotte would always catch him staring at her if she ever happened to look his way. Last night she’d felt miserable when George didn’t turn up again, all he ever seemed to do these days was stay in with his sister. The realisation that he wasn’t coming made Charlotte reckless, allowing the men to buy her drink after drink. Even Ted was being unusually generous, when he knew he’d be better off lending her some money for Annie than getting her intoxicated. She had let them choose what she had and the mixture of gin, sherry and beer had made her drunk enough to feel quite detached from her own body.

As she had stood at the bar begging Maggie for a glass of water to slake her thirst, the barmaid’s jowly face looking impassively back as she continued her ineffectual polishing, Charlotte had suddenly caught sight of her distorted reflection in the bevelled glass behind the bar. Her eyes were so unnaturally bright, her cheeks so strangely flushed, that she’d wondered if she could be running a fever. Johnny had suddenly appeared in the mirror beside her and laughed at her staring at herself.

“Get this girl another drink,” he called to Maggie, who, with a rare smile for Johnny, obediently tucked her cloth back into her apron and picked up a green bottle, still brim-full of gin. “Straight up is how she likes it. Isn’t that right, Lottie?”

He gave her a kiss on her burning cheek as he spoke and, in their reflection in the glass, she could see him looking intently at her. She didn’t like it much but he was buying her another drink and she found it difficult to make herself care. George wasn’t there, after all, though she’d only been persuaded to go along with Ted because George was almost always there on Friday nights.

Outside, after they’d been tipped out onto the street so Maggie could lock up, Charlotte had let Johnny kiss her again, this time nearer her mouth. She had turned away then, but lost her footing in the gutter and stumbled back into his arms, Johnny’s hands tight around her waist while Ted watched from a doorway, his pipe reduced to a red ember in the gloom. Catching his eye, a sudden shame that she had let Johnny pay her so much attention penetrated even through the fug of the drink.

Reliving it now, she felt nauseous and hurled the soiled dress into the corner. The tiny leather purse she tied to her skirts came loose and skittered across the floor after it. She reached down to pick it up but before her fingers had grasped hold she knew it was entirely empty, not even a penny left to mollify Annie with.

Still, even with the worry of money and Annie’s threats to throw her out, her mind kept wandering back to George and his repeated absences. A seed of anxiety had taken root in her stomach during recent weeks and she couldn’t ignore it any longer. With new decisiveness she resolved to go and seek him out immediately, first on Wiltshire Row and then, if he was working, she would go to the print—it was only an hour until midday, when he got his break. Once she found him, she would win him round as she always had before. He might even lend her a bit of money.

She threw on some clothes and pulled a comb through her snarled hair, pinning it up and then spraying it with scent to cover the smell of old smoke that had curled into its lengths the night before. She rushed downstairs, shouting to Annie that she was off to get some work or money or both, slipped through the front door and hurried up the street before Annie could dry her hands and come to the front door to her berate her further.

When she got to George’s, it was Cissy who answered. In the instant before she knocked Charlotte had felt sure it would be George whose face appeared from out of the dark stairwell. The nervousness that had surged in her only a moment before was immediately smothered by Cissy’s meek face blinking at her in the bright daylight, like a gas lamp that had been abruptly turned down.

“If you’re after George, he’s at work,” said Cissy. “He might be doing his half day—I didn’t ask him this morning when he left. Do you want to come in and wait to see if he is out early? I’ve put some tea on.”

The younger girl spoke the words hopefully and, though Charlotte felt too restless to sit still and sip Cissy’s tea, her mind turning over George’s avoidance of her and whether Annie was already packing up her sister’s sad bundles so she could be gone all the quicker, she nevertheless found herself following the thin figure up the stairs.

When they reached the Woolfes’ rooms, Charlotte was relieved to see that George’s father was nowhere to be seen. His silence had unnerved Charlotte the only other time she had been there, when George had spontaneously decided to introduce her. It had made for an awkward conversation, with yawning gaps interspersed with overlapping flurries of meaningless chatter between her and Cissy. Throughout, Mr. Woolfe had remained impassive to the collective embarrassment, simply rolling a slim metal file back and forth on the table with downcast eyes, his only contribution the occasional wet clearing of his throat.

“Dad’s out this morning,” said Cissy, seeing Charlotte’s quick glance about the room. “I said he could take his own cages to the market today, now it’s so chilly. I can’t stand how freezing it gets staying in the same spot. It gets into my bones. He needed the fresh air, I told him.” She smiled to herself as she poured a cup of weak tea out and handed it to Charlotte. “There’s no sugar, I’m afraid,” she remembered, her smile fading.

To Charlotte, who had grown accustomed to Annie’s regime of bleaching, scrubbing and boiling, the air of the room was not transparent but yellowed, as if discoloured by a layer of old grease. Cissy did her best, but she was still young and cleaned only what had been spilled, the rest of the time just dabbing with her cloth at the middle of things while the edges silted up.

Distracted, Charlotte sat down on the one easy chair. Cissy, now armed with her own cup of tea, pulled a hard chair over towards the older girl and sat down opposite, smiling down into the steaming liquid.

“So, you and George have been courting for a fair few months now, haven’t you?” she said shyly, when the quiet between them had grown noticeable. They had barely spent any time alone before.

“Yes, I suppose we have,” said Charlotte with a sigh. “It’s gone quick. But listen, Cissy, while I’m here I may as well ask you. Was he in with you last night? He’d said he might, well, I thought I might see him down the pub.”

Cissy looked both embarrassed and eager at the same time. “He was here for his tea and then he went out for a couple of hours, said he fancied a walk—I don’t even ask no more—and then he was back in, well, it must have been about 10. Then he was up late, keeping me awake with the candle burning while he did his drawing again.”

Charlotte leaned back and let her head rest against the back of the chair. Her headache had descended so it sat immediately above her eye sockets and with her free hand she massaged her brow.

“Are you alright, Lottie?” asked Cissy. “You look ever so pale. Have you had any breakfast?”

“No. Thanks, Cissy, but I couldn’t eat a thing. I had one too many last night and my head is pounding. I think I’d throw my guts up if I ate.”

Cissy looked shocked and tried to cover it by getting up and going over to the table. “Look, I’ll just fetch you a slice of bread to have with your tea,” she said. “You look like you might faint otherwise.”

Charlotte closed her eyes and clasped the hot cup tighter. She knew George was close to Cissy but how much would she tell him about this? Knowing she should keep quiet she asked the question in her mind anyway.

“Cissy, has George said anything to you about me? I won’t tell him you told me or nothing.”

Cissy looked up from the uneven slice of bread she was cutting and smiled shyly. “Oh, he’s always on about you! When you first come and live here and he couldn’t pluck up the courage to talk to you, he was always dropping you into the conversation. Or even just mentioning someone on Avebury Street and I reckoned that was just to get close to talking about you. He said you had fine eyes once, I remember that. I laughed at him for it and he got cross and wouldn’t say nothing else for the rest of the day. I don’t know where he got that from, ‘fine eyes’. Like something out of a romance.”

Charlotte smiled wanly. “But, I mean, has he said anything recently? Like this week or last night, when he was here.”

“Oh, I see. Well, now that I think of it, I can’t remember anything in particular. But then he doesn’t talk much to me, he’s a man, and most of them never say much. He’ll end up like our dad by the time he’s his age, never saying a word. Don’t say I never warned you.”

She giggled, but seeing Charlotte’s face she hurried back over with the bread, the merest scraping of lard smeared on it. Her eyes were round with concern again. “I’m sure he thinks the world of you, Charlotte.” She cast around, not wanting the older girl, who seemed quite fascinating to Cissy, with her strange, slanted eyes and sharp chin, to be disappointed and leave. Then a wonderful idea occurred to her.

“You know what, I bet he’s done drawings of you. He’s been up late two nights on the trot doing something. I’ll fetch his book.” She hesitated. “But you must promise you’ll never tell him what you’ve seen. He keeps his drawings secret, hides them away. Of course I’ve known he keeps his book under the mattress for months—who does he thinks makes the beds round here?—but he’d kill me if he thought I’d shown them around.”

Charlotte’s face had softened as Cissy talked, her cheeks turning rosy with the hope that she’d been worrying over nothing, and that George had just been tired the past few weeks. Perhaps things hadn’t changed between them after all, she’d had it all wrong.

“Oh, I won’t tell, Cissy, cross my heart,” she said eagerly. “I’m good with secrets, honest. Do you really think he’s done a picture of me in his book?’

Cissy quickly returned with the small volume, giggling as she sat back down. She flicked excitedly through the pages until she reached the last sheet to have been drawn on. Her eyes scanned the page quickly and she stopped for an instant before she hurriedly turned it over to the previous drawing. At this her face darkened and she shut the book abruptly.

“What? What is it?” cried Charlotte, standing up and knocking over the tea Cissy had left on the bare boards of the floor.

“I’ll get a cloth for that,” said Cissy, but as she rose, Charlotte reached out and snatched the book from her hands. She opened the book at the front and turned the sheets quickly, the long nail of her forefinger separating the leaves deftly. Most of the sketches were plants, copies, some of them surprisingly intricate and life-like, of the botanical plates George set every day at the print. But a rough sketch left incomplete on one page showed a small face with a pointed chin. Only the eyes had been properly drawn in with shading and detail and they were undoubtedly her own. She looked up and smiled at Cissy broadly, wondering at her stricken face.