Birdcage Walk (7 page)

Turning to the last page with markings on, about halfway through the scuffed book, Charlotte became very still, her smile fading. It was another face, less roughly incomplete than the one of herself, and of an entirely different person. These eyes were round and the hair framing the face was plainly looped in an old-fashioned style over the ears, rendering them invisible. The mouth was small and neat beneath a snub nose. Charlotte turned to the image on the previous page and absorbed the likeness of a house she had never seen, and which was certainly not on any street she knew.

Still standing, with the two spots of pink on her cheeks darkening to crimson, she closed the book with a snap and then, quite deliberately, threw it down hard. Both girls looked down at the splaying pages, which came to rest open at the picture of the strange girl. Charlotte stared at it for a long moment and then walked out of the room, her steps on the stairs leaden, with none of their customary fleetness and grace.

George’s walk back from Holloway Road to the large white house on Aberdeen Park was over frustratingly quickly. Mrs. Drew had asked George about his family and expressed sorrow when he told her about his mother’s death. Clemency had kept quiet during this careful conversation between the older lady and the working man, preferring to observe George. He was quite unlike any person she’d ever met, but not because he was poorer, though that was certainly the case. The difference was something less tangible; a certain strain he seemed to be under when he answered her mother’s polite questions and the absolute rigidity with which he held himself, his narrow shoulders pulled right back. She realised now that all the young men she had met—usually the sons of her father’s associates—were entirely comfortable in their own skin, their own expensive clothes. Those men, even the ones who were barely older than herself, always knew what to say, and made fresh enquiries of her before she had fully considered their last question.

George was thankfully unaware that he was being watched, his concentration taken up by Mrs. Drew’s questions and his replies, which he knew mustn’t be muttered or in slang, or, most dreadful of all, include a swear word. Like the previous occasion, he could only give the lovely house a cursory glance as the trio went up the path, occupied as he was with telling Mrs. Drew about his mother’s work at Freeman’s cigar factory before she fell ill. He resolved to stand and absorb the house after he left from the opposite pavement; committing it to solid memory so he could later improve on his sketch at home.

The surly maid who had slammed the front door in his face the last time he had visited was already holding it back before they had scaled the steps. Against the heavy slab of painted oak she looked tiny, though no less fierce.

“Ah, Milly, thank you,” said Mrs. Drew. “We have an unexpected visitor, so will you please prepare some tea and perhaps a few sandwiches. It’s been hours since breakfast and luncheon seems a great way off. Use something light though, some cucumber and a little of the tongue.”

She plucked off her hat and gloves as she issued her instructions, while Milly stared insolently at George with the same eyebrow raised as before. George cleared his throat and quickly snatched his cap off, holding it sheepishly in front of him. Mrs. Drew turned to smile benevolently at him.

“George here has come to help me bring down that steamer trunk from the attic. I want it to be ship-shape up there for Captain Drew when he comes home for Christmas.”

“I could have helped you with that, Mrs. Drew,” said Milly icily, still glaring at George, who was now engaged in smoothing down an awkward lick of hair so he didn’t have to look at her.

“Don’t be silly, of course you couldn’t have,” replied Mrs. Drew smartly. “That trunk is far too heavy for you or I to carry. It won’t take George more than a few minutes and then he can take some elevenses before he goes. That’s all, Milly, off you go.”

The maid scuttled away towards the back of the house, and disappeared through a doorway. Moments later, the clash of metal issued from the kitchen, somewhere deep in the house. Clemency aimed a small smile at George.

“Well then, let us go up and tackle this awkward trunk, shall we?” Mrs. Drew started up the staircase without waiting for a reply.

George, following her at a respectful distance, took the opportunity of not being watched to observe himself, able at last to drink in his surroundings. High above the curved staircase was a large window that had apparently been cut in the ceiling. Through its panes, which formed an oval dome, he could see the same sky he watched from his window at night. They arrived at a small gallery that was punctuated by half a dozen closed doors. A large oil painting of a dour-countenanced man hung on one wall, his dark clothes seeping like molasses into the shadowy background. Clemmie, seeing George stare as they passed, spoke quietly behind him.

“That’s my father’s father. He’s an old man there but when he was younger he was in the Royal Navy, just like my father’s older brother. Father is in the Merchant Navy, that’s how he knows Mr. Booth, you see.”

George nodded, not really seeing at all. He didn’t know what Mr. Booth and his book about London’s poor had to do with the sea. Perhaps he could ask Miss Clemmie later, when he wasn’t so intent on not stumbling up the stairs. Through a door they reached a second staircase, narrower and darker than the previous one, and without any deep crimson carpet covering the treads. Mrs. Drew’s buttoned boots echoed on the unvarnished wood and George made sure his own steps were light. At the top of the flight were two plain wooden doors facing each other, both of them closed. From a ring attached at her waist by a narrow silk ribbon, Mrs. Drew removed a small key and placed it in the lock of one.

The attic, hidden behind such an unremarkable door, was far larger than George had expected. The narrow stairs had made him imagine that the house grew smaller the higher you climbed. In fact, the attic was formed of one room which extended almost the width and depth of the whole house. The other door on the small landing could only have led to a box room, or perhaps it was where the maid slept.

The height of it impressed George as much as its length. He could have stood without stooping at the lowest part of the roof’s pitch, his head only just reaching the eaves and their cobweb fronds. The air in the room was old and close and the sunlight streaming in through a pair of round windows revealed swarms of dust, each mote catching the light in turn. It was quite different to the grander hallway downstairs with its elegant balustrade and panelled doors, though no less fascinating to George.

The walls were unpapered, the lime wash a replica of the cold, hard white of the sky when the cloud cover is high and even. The contents of the attic were covered in pale sheets to protect them and, what with the unvarnished boards, the overall effect was strangely ethereal to him, more accustomed as he was to drab colours and busy patterns which hid the grime.

While George looked around, Mrs. Drew had hastened over to one corner and whipped the sheet off a large trunk. She stood back to let the dust settle, raising a hand to cover her nose and mouth. When she was satisfied she wasn’t going to choke or sneeze, she bent to undo the latch. Lifting it, she peered inside and then straightened up stiffly.

“This is the one I want to sort through today. I knew it was here. It’s full of maps and atlases that I’m sure my husband would like to see again but has forgotten all about. Much of it came from his uncle, who left many papers and books to him in his will. This, as well as a number of other trunks, were shipped to us from India when he died last year.”

She looked up thoughtfully. “Now, George, do you think you’ll be able to lift it?”

George crossed to the trunk and saw that it wasn’t solid wood and it wasn’t full. He bent down and grabbed hold of the handles at either end. Much to his relief, he could indeed lift it, finding it more awkward than heavy, its width making his outstretched arms strain and ache almost immediately. Mrs. Drew wished for him to take it down to the parlour on the ground floor and, with Clemency’s fussing over where to put his feet, he reached the bottom of the last flight of stairs without mishap.

“Excellent! Thank you very much,” said Mrs. Drew, flushed with pleasure that the task had been so satisfactorily completed. “Now, you will stay for some elevenses, won’t you? Are you hungry?”

George was ravenous by now. The penny for the bun he had been planning to buy was still lodged somewhere in the lining of his jacket, and he hadn’t eaten since the evening before.

“I am a little hungry,” he said quietly. “Thank you, Mrs. Drew.”

She rang the bell next to the fireplace and almost immediately Milly arrived carrying a tray laden with tiny, crustless sandwiches and a fine china teapot. George saw that there were just two cups on the tray. Meanwhile, Mrs. Drew had lifted the trunk’s latch once more and was kneeling on a cushion to rummage within, Clemency peering over her shoulder.

“I’ve got yours in the kitchen,” said Milly to George quietly, just as Mrs. Drew rose to her feet and turned to the tray.

George stood immobile, wondering what he should say before he followed Milly out. He had thought he would sit here, with the mother and daughter, and only now did he realise his mistake. Clemency coloured and looked down, having also counted the cups. Mrs. Drew sneezed loudly and retrieved a lace-edged handkerchief from her sleeve.

“Goodness, there is a great deal of dust in this trunk. Milly, you will have to see to it before I have a proper look or I will be choking all afternoon. Now, as it’s only elevenses, I don’t see why we should stand on ceremony. Why don’t you bring George’s tea in here and we can all sit together.”

Looking openly disgusted, the maid withdrew and soon returned with a white enamelled plate and a large mug of stewed tea. On the plate was a thick sandwich with a slice of tongue slapped inside. He knew it was all Milly thought he was good for, but he was starving and knew he would have got no sustenance from the dainty triangles of bread and slivers of cucumber meant for the ladies.

“Ah, now that’s nice,” said Mrs. Drew, settling down into a deep leather wing chair with a well-piled plate. “Take some sugar in your tea, George, won’t you?”

Mrs. Drew liked to take a great deal of sugar in hers. When she first met her future husband he had liked to joke that she was attempting to stand her spoon up in it. The truth was that she hadn’t had much of anything sweet as a girl, and the taste of it had remained a treat, though she had been married, and lived in comfort, for nearly twenty years.

When she was growing up, Mrs. Drew had lived only a dozen streets away from the home she had made with her husband. It had been a very different upbringing to Clemency’s nonetheless, and although her family had not been very poor, there had never been any spare. So while she had never gone hungry, her father bringing home a decent enough wage as a solicitor’s clerk, there had been no room in the household budget to buy anything pretty or tasty just for its own sake. She knew that Milly silently cursed her for accumulating so many fripperies and ornaments that collected dust, but she simply got so much pleasure from a musical box with its miniature brass mechanism and tinkling tune, or a porcelain figurine, its features picked out in hair’s breadth gold brushstrokes, that she could not resist adding to her collection. Clemmie was a credit to both her parents and always remembered to thank everyone for all her many Christmas and birthday presents. Even so, Mrs. Drew wondered if her daughter could ever feel the pure delight in these things that her mother did. One exception, of course, appeared to be the birdcage the Woolfe boy’s father had made. She had recognised something of her own childish wonder in Clemmie’s face when she had carried it through from the hallway for everyone at the party to admire.

The next half an hour passed pleasantly, Mrs. Drew somehow managing to maintain a ceaseless flow of light conversation, which required neither answers nor pause for her to eat, though the heap of finger sandwiches steadily diminished. At the end of a long anecdote concerning a maiden aunt, she suddenly turned to George.

“I don’t suppose you would consider helping us with some other small tasks, would you?” she said. “We would give you something for your trouble, naturally.”

“Mama, I think that George must have his own proper job to go to, don’t you, George?” broke in Clemmie, her face pink.

Mrs. Drew dismissed her daughter’s concern with a wave of her hand. “Of course he has. I realise that, my dear. But I only meant that George might come on the occasional Saturday. Or do you work then too, George?”

“I do usually work the mornings on a Saturday, Mrs. Drew, but, like today, sometimes I can swap shifts with a fellow and make up the time the next week instead. I could be free to help most Saturday afternoons, and would be glad to, if you needed me.”

He looked down at his plate and wondered whether to take another bite that would require chewing and swallowing before he could talk again. He decided to leave it for the time being, the new excitement in his stomach making him feel quite full already. Mrs. Drew looked triumphantly at Clemmie.

“There you are, my dear, he doesn’t mind at all, and a little extra in the pocket never hurts, does it George?”

He started to protest, but Mrs. Drew held her hand up, the stones in her rings creating a flurry of light spots on the wall behind her. “No, I shan’t hear of you working for free,” she said. “It’s one thing to bring a trunk down the stairs for a pair of weak women; quite another to see to the rest of that attic. If only we had discovered you in time for the pruning. I said to Clemency’s father when he was home in September that I would no longer employ the man who did our gardening this summer. He had such an insolent smile and an uncanny knack of creeping around silently. You never quite knew what window he’d appear at next.” She fell into silence, shaking her head with the unhappy memory.

George took the opportunity to speak while she was quiet. “I don’t have no experience . . . well, I mean to say that I haven’t done too much gardening in my time, Mrs. Drew, so it’s probably as well that it’s too late for me to start now,” he said.

“Yes, of course. I’m sure, however, that you will manage very well in the attic. There are countless boxes of books and all manner of oddments that I am determined to get to the bottom of. It will be such a lift to the spirits when it is all done. Sometimes I can’t sleep for thinking about it all in such a state of disorganisation, and just above my head too. George, you will be able to fetch and lift while I direct you and we will have it as neat as a new pin in time for Christmas. Does that sound reasonable to you?”

George nodded solemnly. “Yes, Mrs. Drew, it does. I can come next Saturday afternoon if that suits. Or . . . ” He stopped and then, resolved, went quiet. He didn’t want to use up all his opportunities to be here in one day.

“Or?” asked Mrs. Drew.

“Well, I would stay on this afternoon to help you, but I said I would get back to help my sister.”